Eli Lilly and Company Earnings Call Insights: Progression-Free Survival Advantage and Phase II Efficacy Data

Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE:LLY) recently reported its fourth quarter earnings and discussed the following topics in its earnings conference call.

Progression-Free Survival Advantage

Catherine Arnold – Credit Suisse: I had a question for Sue. I was wondering if she could comment on if there is a scenario in the cancer area where a drug hit PFS and OS and wasn’t approved or didn’t get priority review and whether she could just comment on now that the data is out what was most surprising to her as far as the total dataset released? Thanks.

Sue Mahony, Ph.D. – SVP and President, Lilly Oncology: With regards to your first question about whether there’s been an agent in the cancer market that has overall survival and PFS data without approval, I am not aware of any molecule in the cancer market that has had overall survival and PFS data that hasn’t been approved or indeed had priority review. With regards to your question about the data with regard to ramucirumab obviously we were very pleased to see the data and we were pleased by the reaction that we had from investigators and leaders in prescribing physicians at ASCO-GI last week. I think specifically this is the first study to show both an overall survival and progression-free survival advantage in a difficult to treat patient population in a high unmet need as a single agent and this was a single agent study for ramucirumab. And in addition to that we saw a safety and side effect profile with – again, we were pleased to see with just 10%, 10.5% of patients coming off therapy because of side effects in the ram ARM versus 6% in the placebo ARM. So I think it’s the balance between the efficacy that we saw and the safety that we saw in that trial that we were presently pleased to see.