Boston, MA 01/28/2014 (wallstreetpr) – On Jan 27, Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE) said one of the company’s experimental drug had failed to achieve desired results in two studies during tests conducted on patients suffering from the most common form of lung cancer.
Pfizer had conducted two late stage researches on a group of patients who had earlier been subjected to a treatment for advanced small cell lung cancer. The drug “Dacomitinib” however had shown no successful results. The drug maker is still continuing to study its drug in a Phase III stage called ARCHER 1050, but chances of success have largely declined, as reported by the ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum.
ARCHER 1009 AND BR.26
In ARCHER 1009, first of Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)’s unsuccessful trials, patients dosed with the once daily pill showed no symptoms of improvements in survival without the cancer worsening when compared with Tarceva or Erlotinib, a Roche Holding AG’s popular drug. The second trail called BR.26 was done on patients who had failed to show positive results for chemotherapy treatment.
Tarceva is the more commonly used medication for patients having mutated forms of a protein called Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor or EGFR. The protein is related with normal cell growth regulation functions in the body. However, its mutated forms can be harmful as they result in proliferation causing different types of cancers. While the current standard Tarceva attack just one kind of receptor, like some other lung cancer treatment options, the new Dacomitinib aims at blocking multiple kinds of EGFRs.
Pfizer’s drug lose investors’ interests
The largest U.S. drugmaker has annual revenue of $50 billion and if this drug would have been successful, it would have proved itself to be a moderate sized product for the company. Cowen Group Inc (NASDAQ:COWN) had forecasted annual sales of around $500 million from dacomitinib in the next six years. But now, as Schoenebaum reports, investors are showing little interest in the drug with Wall Street betting only $300 million from the drug sales by 2018.
