ASCO-GI – Novartis looks for earlier Lutathera use

Novartis’s radiopharmaceutical Lutathera is selling over $500m per year, but the company has its sights on more. It hopes that the Netter-2 trial in first-line gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (GEP-NETs), being presented today at ASCO-GI, will help. In the US Lutathera already has a broad label for GEP-NETs, based on the second-line Netter-1 study, but Netter-2 will be important to convince doctors about earlier use, Novartis noted during the recent JP Morgan healthcare conference. ASCO-GI heard that Lutathera plus Sandostatin convincingly beat Sandostatin alone on the primary endpoint, progression-free survival, as well as on overall response rates, in patients with grade 2 and 3 disease, the intermediate-to-high end of the spectrum. While the result is hard to put into context – the ASCO-GI press release notes a lack of options for this population – it has set the bar for other radiopharmaceuticals. ITM’s lutetium-based ITM-11 appears to be the next most advanced, in the phase 3 Compose trial in first and second-line GEP-NETs. RayzeBio, soon to be part of Bristol Myers Squibb, has said it hopes to study its potentially more potent alpha-emitting project RYZ101 in early disease, though for now it is focused on patients who have progressed on Lutathera. 

Back of the Netter-2? Results with Lutathera in first-line GEP NETs

*Primary endpoint. Source: ASCO-GI.