NEW YORK, April 10 (UPI) -- U.S. firms ImClone and Bristol-Myers Squibb said Tuesday their cancer drug Erbitux failed to improve overall survival in pancreatic cancer patients.
The companies were testing the drug in a phase 3 trial, administering it in combination with the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine to patients with locally advanced unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer.
The open-label study was designed to compare Erbitux as a first-line treatment used with gemcitabine to gemcitabine alone in more than 700 patients.
The trial was conducted at various sites in the United States and Canada by the Southwest Oncology Group, a cancer network sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, and was completed "in a significantly shorter time than projected," the companies said.
They added they will jointly work toward fully interpreting the data.
"We still consider pancreatic cancer to be of the utmost priority and we intend to pursue additional evaluations with Erbitux, including a pilot study of Erbitux and bevacizumab with or without gemcitabine, as well as our pipeline agents, to improve the outcome for patients with pancreatic cancer," said Eric Rowinsky, chief medical officer and senior vice president of ImClone Systems.
