China’s Akeso says new cancer drug beats AstraZeneca’s in trial

Chinese biopharmaceutical firm Akeso has announced that its immunotherapy drug had outperformed AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi in a head-to-head phase three trial for biliary tract cancer, reports the South China Morning Post.

The result represents another breakthrough for Akeso’s ivonescimab–which has already been licensed by the US firm Summit Therapeutics in a multibillion-dollar deal–as China’s biopharmaceutical industry increasingly looks to compete on the global stage.

The Chinese trial tested ivonescimab and chemotherapy against AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi (durvalumab) plus chemotherapy on a total of 682 patients with advanced biliary tract cancer–a particularly deadly form of cancer with a five-year survival rate of less than 5%, according to a Nature study. The results showed that patients taking Akeso’s novel drug lived longer than those using the AstraZeneca treatment, the company said in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing released a day ahead of its interim results.