Summit Shares Soar After Cancer Drug Tops Merck’s Keytruda

(Bloomberg) — Summit Therapeutics Inc. shares jumped after the biotech company said a late-stage trial met its goal in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

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The Miami-based company said that its drug, ivonescimab, showed “a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement” in progression-free survival compared with Merck & Co.’s blockbuster cancer treatment, Keytruda. The study was conducted in patients in China and compared the two drugs as monotherapies, as opposed to part of a combination of treatments.

Summit shares rose 272% on Thursday after the results were released, their biggest increase on record. Merck shares slipped 1.1%, erasing an earlier gain.

The study was conducted by Summit’s partner, Akeso Inc. The two drugmakers have had a rocky month with earlier results from ivonescimab being viewed by investors as disappointing.

Read More: Akeso Shares Plunge as Lung Cancer Drug Trial Data Disappoints

Though the latest research was conducted in China, Stifel analysts said they expect the drug would also produce positive results in trials in other countries.

“It will be difficult to suggest the benefit in an Asian population would not translate into a Western population,” the analysts said in a research note on Thursday.

Citigroup analyst Yigal Nochomovitz added that the results should serve as a reminder “of the high potential of ivonescimab not only in lung, but across multiple solid tumors.”

(Updates with partner in fourth paragraph, analysts’ comments starting in fifth.)

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