Study Shows Genentech Drug Helps Cancer Patients

Genentech Inc. said Monday that a pill it was developing with two other companies added two weeks to the lives of pancreatic cancer patients in a large clinical trial when taken with chemotherapy.

Shares of South San Francisco-based Genentech and one of its partners, OSI Pharmaceuticals Inc., rose.

The results of the trial, though modest, surprised Wall Street because many drugs have failed to work against pancreatic cancer. Steven Harr of Morgan Stanley said in a research note that he expected the drug, called Tarceva, eventually would have sales of $100 million to $350 million in treating pancreatic cancer alone.

The pill is being reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration as a secondary treatment for non-small-cell lung cancer and could one day have total sales of $1.5 billion, Harr said. The financial community expects FDA approval of Tarceva as a treatment for lung cancer by the end of January.

Pancreatic cancer patients on Tarceva and gemcitabine, a standard chemotherapy drug, had a median survival of 6.4 months, meaning half of the patients taking both drugs lived less than 6.4 months and half lived longer.

The median survival for patients on gemcitabine alone was 5.9 months. All patients had cancer that had spread beyond the pancreas.

At the end of one year, 25.6% of patients who received a Tarceva drug combination were alive, compared with 19.7% of patients on chemotherapy alone. There were a total of 569 patients in the trial, which was sponsored by OSI.

The third company working with Genentech is Roche, the Swiss drug firm that owns a majority stake in Genentech.

Pancreatic cancer ranks among the most difficult cancers to treat. The American Cancer Society said that about 31,850 Americans would be diagnosed with the disease this year and 31,270 would die from it. It is more common in men and associated with smoking.

“To have anything working in pancreatic cancer is a high bar” to meet, said Gwen Fyfe, Genentech’s vice president for oncology.

Genentech and its partners said they needed to review data from the trial before taking the next step in the drug approval process. OSI Chief Executive Colin Goddard said the companies hoped to get Tarceva “labeled and approved as soon as we can” for pancreatic cancer, but FDA action on Tarceva in lung cancer would come first.

Genentech shares rose $1.91 to $53.91 on the New York Stock Exchange, and OSI jumped $5.60, or 9%, to $68.20 on Nasdaq.