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ASCO conference: Fibrogen pancreatic cancer drug enables surgical treatment

FibroGen Inc. said its medicine pamrevlumab enabled cancer patients previously deemed ineligible for surgical treatment to qualify for tumor resection.

The San Francisco-based company evaluated the drug in a phase 1/2 trial of patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer. For six months, 24 patients received pamrevlumab with chemotherapy while 13 patients received chemotherapy alone. The study's goal was to see whether the cancer changes from unresectable to surgically removable.

FibroGen said 70.8% of patients treated with pamrevlumab and chemotherapy became eligible for resection; 33.3% of them went ahead with surgery. Only 15.4% of patients treated with chemotherapy alone qualified for resection; 7.7% of them underwent surgery.

As of May, patients who had resections showed a median survival benefit of 40 months, compared to 18.6 months for those who did not. FibroGen said it continues to monitor the trial participants for survival.

Patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer have an average survival rate of 9 months to 18 months, and surgical resection is considered a meaningful treatment goal to potentially prolong a patient's life, the company said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted pamrevlumab fast track status as a pancreatic cancer treatment in March.

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.