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Squibb Co., testifies before the Senate Finance Committee on"Drug Pricing in America: A Prescription for Change, Part II" February 26, 2019 in Washington, DC.Though the pandemic has been much of the healthcare world’s focus over the past year and a half, new innovations in fighting cancer are still very much the focus of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies.
Here are three of the biggest presentations that will take place at this year’s conference, and why Wall Street is keeping a close eye on them. Analysts at Cowen, Morningstar and SVB Leerink told Forbes that some of the biggest news of the conference will be about a new drug from Bristol Myers Squibb called relatlimab. The company has tested this drug in combination with its drug Opdivo in patients with untreated metastatic or unresectable melanoma.
In March, BMS revealed that the combination of relatlimab, which targets a checkpoint called LAG-3, and Opdivo work twice as well together to treat melanoma patients compared to Opdivo alone. “It’s an impressive benefit,” says Daina Graybosch, an analyst at SVB Leerink. Invasive melanoma is a deadly skin cancer, affecting about 100,000 Americans each year, and this combo might be the key to helping more of them survive. Cowen analysts call the combo a “serious competitor” in first line melanoma treatment. And if the data on relatlimab continues to look good, “whatever happens is going to set up a really different commercial dynamic,” Graybosch says.Roche’s checkpoint inhibitor Tecentriq has had a tough year already.