Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. said certain skin cancer patients on its drug Opdivo lived longer while keeping the disease at bay compared to those treated with its drug Yervoy.
In a phase 3 study, named CheckMate -238, the company evaluted the treatments in 906 patients with stage IIIB/C or stage IV melanoma who are at a high risk of their disease returning after having surgery to remove the tumors.
Previously, the study showed that Opdivo lowered the risk of the disease recurring by 35% compared to Yervoy. After 18 months, about 66.4% of those treated with Opdivo did not have any recurrence of the disease, while 52.7% of those treated Yervoy remained disease free.
Updated results from the study, after a minimum follow-up of 2 years, showed that 62.6% of patients treated with Opdivo did not see their cancer return versus 50.2% for patients on Yervoy.
The recurrence-free survival rate for Opdivo was higher than Yervoy in patients regardless of the stage of their disease or nature of the mutation present in the cancer.
The 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is expected to bring together more than 32,000 professionals from all over the world, with more than 2,500 study abstracts to be presented on-site and an additional 3,350 abstracts to be published online.
