July 28 (Reuters) – GSK on Tuesday said partner Hansoh Pharmaceutical’s experimental drug met the main goal of keeping an aggressive bone cancer from worsening in a late-stage trial, boosting the British drugmaker’s efforts to rebuild its cancer portfolio.
The treatment, ris-rez, met its primary endpoint of progression-free survival in relapsed osteosarcoma in the trial. The results come just weeks after the drug succeeded in another advanced study.
Osteosarcoma, the most common childhood bone tumor, is diagnosed in about 400 children and teens in the U.S. every year, according to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It is usually treated by chemotherapy and surgery.
GSK, which holds rights to the drug outside China, is accelerating development of the treatment for multiple types of cancers, along with mo-rez, another experimental therapy licensed from the Chinese drugmaker that it believes has blockbuster potential.
Ris-rez, or HS-20093, is an antibody-drug conjugate, a class of targeted cancer therapies often described as “guided missiles” as they deliver cell-killing drugs directly to tumours while largely sparing healthy tissue.
China-based Hansoh said in a separate filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange Tuesday it would initiate communications to prepare for a biologics license application in China for HS-20093 “in the near term”.
(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka and Prerna Bedi in Bengaluru; Additional reporting from Andrew Silver in Shanghai; Editing by Vijay Kishore)
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