Summit Therapeutics' Lung Cancer Drug Outperforms Keytruda in HARMONI-2 Phase 3 Trial, Shares Up 227% in China

May 30, 2024, 09:15 PM

Summit Therapeutics announced that its experimental therapy for non-small cell lung cancer met the primary endpoint in the HARMONI-2 Phase 3 trial conducted in China. The trial demonstrated that Summit's drug outperformed Merck's Keytruda in a head-to-head comparison, leading to a significant increase in Summit's share price, which rose by 227%. The drug acts against both PD1 and VEGF, suggesting a broader mechanism of action compared to Keytruda, which targets only PD1. Summit's market cap reached 5 billion. However, there are concerns about the FDA's recognition of data from Chinese trials, and the trial's success was measured by PFS, not OS.