AbbVie's Veliparib Missed Goals in Two Late-Stage Studies

AbbVie announced on Wednesday its experimental cancer drug missed primary endpoints in two different phase 3 studies.

The drug is called veliparib, which is an investigational PARP inhibitor being evaluated in multiple tumor types.

Investigators running these trials were testing velaparib’s impact in conjunction with a chemotherapy regimen on patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).

Results from the NSCLC study indicated the drug failed to improve the overall survival of these patients who smoked within the past 12 months and had more than 100 smoking events in their lifetime, according to Reuters.

Also, the drug was unable to achieve its main goal of complete pathologic response in the TNBC study with 312 patients.

“Research shows there is a role for PARP inhibitors in cancers associated with DNA repair deficits, such as those with BRCA mutations. In these clinical trials, we wanted to explore whether a PARP inhibitor could augment chemotherapy in patients with squamous non-small cell lung cancer and triple negative breast cancer by disrupting the repair of cancer cells,” said AbbVie’s Vice President of Oncology Clinical Development Gary Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., in a statement.

“Unfortunately, these data do not support the use of veliparib in combination with chemotherapy in these patients,” continued Gordon.

Detailed results of these studies will either be published in a peer-reviewed journal or at an upcoming medical meeting.

AbbVie has been attempting to bring new drugs to market that could offset potential losses from increased biosimilar competition against its lucrative Humira franchise, wrote FierceBiotech.

The company is expected to present lung cancer data for Rova-T, a drug AbbVie acquired in a billion dollar acquisition on a small startup called StemCentrx, later this year along with a potential separate presentation on its experimental JAK1 inhibitor ABT-934.