Pluvicto miss puts pressure on PSMAfore expansion

Novartis has resolved its supply issues with Pluvicto, but the radiopharmaceutical's first-quarter sales still fell short of analyst expectations, at $310m versus Jefferies’ estimate of $338m. In the currently approved use of post-chemo castration-resistant metastatic prostate cancer growth is set to remain slow; Novartis said during its first-quarter call on Tuesday that it didn't expect to add treatment sites in this indication, and instead would rely on increasing the number of doctors able to refer patients to existing centres, and expansion outside the US. This piles more pressure on the pre-chemo indication, where the company is preparing a filing based on updated overall survival data from the PSMAfore trial; however, there are doubts about PSMAfore, including the fact that a high rate of crossover has made OS difficult to interpret. On Tuesday Novartis narrowed down the submission timeline to “early” in the second half, versus its previous broad second-half estimate. Beyond this, the company is trialling Pluvicto in hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, where results from the PSMAddition trial are expected in 2025, and localised oligometastatic prostate cancer, where the PSMA-DC began in the first quarter.

Pluvicto grinds upwards

Source: company financial releases.