By
Tolu Ajiboye
December 13th, 2023
Pfizer suffers a setback in trials targeted at getting Ibrance approved as an early-stage breast cancer therapy. As a result, PFE stock lost around 7% yesterday.
Years of research go into developing either a drug or a therapy for any treatment. When the team of researchers makes a remarkable headway, the treatment must undergo a series of trials before being administered to anyone. Being the dynamic humans that we are, there are still chances that the treatment will neither work as prescribed nor give the results that we expected. This is the dilemma with Pfizer Inc (NYSE: PFE) whose stock plummeted by around 7% after the biopharma giant recorded setbacks with their breast cancer treatment, Ibrance.
Yesterday Pfizer (PFE) stock fell to $35.46. However, now in the pre-market, it gained 1.35% to reach $35.94 which is below the level at which it started the year. In January, teh price was around $39.
Dig into Ibrance Therapy Potentials
Ibrance is a medication for the treatment of HR-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer that was developed by Pfizer in 2015 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2017. Since then, the drug has been a frontline therapy for the treatment of advanced or metastatic breast cancer in adults with HR+ or HER2- Ibrance has the active component called Palbociclib which is a selective inhibitor of the Cyclin-dependent kinases CDK4 and CDK6. Palbociclib stands as the first CDK4/6 inhibitor to be approved for cancer therapy.
With the success rates shown by Ibrance both in clinical trials and patient treatments, there is a likely tendency that patient’s endocrine cells in which the drug is meant to target can develop a resistance to the drugs. This however does not call for much concern as Dana Farber Institute researchers discovered that taking a week-long holiday from the drug can restore sensitivity by the cells it is meant to target. This discovery thus eliminates the fear of the drug’s impotence.
Where the Setback Originates from
Ibrance is currently administered as a late-stage treatment or cancer raking in enough profit for Pfizer in sales. The company believed that revenues could be further boosted if Ibrance meets the requirement to be adopted as an early-stage cancer drug and thus launched a study to this effect. A review from a team of independent monitors leading the trial stated that Ibrance is “unlikely to show a statistically significant improvement in the primary endpoint of invasive disease-free survival (iDFS).”
The review which was released on Friday has sparked a loss in the stock price as investors react to the disappointing trial.
Long Term Implication
Market movements are dynamic and are not absolute. Ibrance still remains relevant in the fight against cancer. This fact is corroborated by the revenue brought in by the drugs which amounted to about $1.2 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2020. While it may take a while to recover from the Ibrance recent trial setback, further Research, and Development the company is engaged in has the potential to help maintain the company’s growth rate of 6% per annum through 2025.
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