(AOF) – Merck & Co, whose title fell 1% in foreclosure, announced the failure of its treatment against metastatic non-small cell lung cancer in the context of a clinical trial. The latter relates to MK-7684A, a co-formulation including Keytruda for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease has progressed after treatment with immunotherapy and platinum-based chemotherapy. This includes evaluating the efficacy of adding MK-7684A to docetaxel compared to docetaxel alone.
Results from the open-label arm of the study evaluating MK-7684A alone showed that the co-formulation did not reach statistical significance for the primary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) and was numerically less efficacious than docetaxel .
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Loss of speed in European research
European research is losing ground to American and Chinese research. In twenty years, Europe’s share has fallen from 41% to 31% in global R&D. China’s share jumped from 1% to 8%. As for the United States, which supplanted Europe, in 2001 it devoted only 2 billion euros per year more than Europe to R&D, whereas now this gap has reached 25 billion! Some experts accuse the European authorities of not having deployed effective policies. The financing of pharmaceutical research should therefore have been better targeted via the “Horizon 2020” programme. France only comes in eighteenth position in European funding despite the quality of its research. Conversely, the United States concentrates funding on Boston and a few centers of excellence.