Tanja Obradovic, Senior Advisor of Oncology Drug Development at HopeAI, Consultant, Oncology Drug Development at Arc Nouvel Clinical Development Consulting, and Oncology Medical Strategy Advisor at Mercurial AI, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“Today troubled efforts to block Ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3-related (ATR) kinase got another setback as AstraZeneca just announced failure of LATIFY Phase III trial.
LATIFY (NCT05450692) failed to show that ATR inhibitor ceralasertib in combination with PD-L1 inhibitor Imfinzi (durvalumab) delivers overall survival (OS) benefit versus standard-of-care docetaxel in patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who progressed on prior anti-PD-(L)1 therapy and platinum-based chemo.
Outcome is not surprising considering disappointing experience of AstraZeneca testing ceralasertib in patients with melanoma who progressed on immunotherapy in Phase II Monette study. Also, experiences of competitors with other ATP inhibitors so far- camonsertib (Repare Therapeutics), elimusertib (Bayer) and berzosertib (Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany).
Question remaining is what will Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany do with tuvusertib, an oral ATR inhibitor. Tuvusertib portfolio currently has 5 recruiting studies within early space of Phase I and Phase II. Expecting continuation or opening of the Phase III trial(s) after news today seems unlikely.”
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