Astrazeneca drags down the FTSE 100 following mixed cancer trial results

Shares in FTSE 100 Astrazeneca and Daiichi Sankyo nose dived today after the pair revealed mixed results in their lung cancer drug’s late-stage trial.

Shares in Astrazenca tumbled some 5.4 per cent, taking 40 points off the FTSE 100 and wiping out close to £100bn in market value.

Daiichi Sankyo, traded in Tokyo, dropped 10 per cent.

Hiroshima Wada, an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., said the result is “somewhat negative”, despite its approval still being likely due to its overall survival rate and progression-free survival, which is the length of time during and after the treatment of a disease.

Morgan Stanley’s Shinichiro Muraoka also said the results were “a bit disappointing”.

The drug, Dato-DXd, is said to target proteins on cancer cell surfaces seen in up to 80 per cent of triple-negative breast cancer cases and other lung cancers. 

Daiichi Sankyo said while the survival results in the full trial still favoured that of Dato-DXd over the current standard treatment, docetaxel, “statistical significance” was not reached.

This is despite the drug already proven to prevent the growth of cancer.

Astrazeneca’s other lung cancer drug, Imfinzi, was approved last month for treatment in the US to be used both before and after surgery, just days after the company’s market value hit £200bn for the first time.

Imfinzi, which is meant to treat early-stage non-small cell lung cancer alongside chemotherapy, is administered before and after surgery.

The approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was based on positive results from trials in October 2023, which Astrazeneca said found a 32 per cent reduction in the risk of recurrence, progression or death compared to chemotherapy alone.