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Jan 16 (Reuters) - Danish drugmaker Genmab GMAB.CO and its U.S. partner AbbVie ABBV.N said on Friday that their drug for a type of blood cancer failed to improve the survival rate in patients in a late-stage study.
U.S.-listed shares of Genmab were down more than 7% in afternoon trade.
The study tested the drug, epcoritamab, in 483 patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B‑cell lymphoma, who had already received at least one prior treatment and were not candidates for intensive chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant.
The companies said the study also showed improvements in the share of patients whose cancer could no longer be detected, duration of response, and time to next treatment.
However, the trial did not show a clear improvement in overall survival, meaning patients did not live longer in a statistically meaningful way at the time of the analysis, the companies said.
Genmab and its partner AbbVie said they will discuss next steps with the regulatory authorities and added that further results will be released in medical meeting later.
The drug is already approved in many countries for other lymphoma conditions and is marketed as Epkinly in the U.S. and Japan and as Tepkinly in the European Union.
Genmab and AbbVie said they expect data in 2026 from two other late-stage trials testing a fixed-length course of epcoritamab in diffuse large B‑cell lymphoma, including a first-line study combining the drug with standard chemotherapy and another study combining it with Bristol Myers' Revlimid in previously treated patients.
(Reporting by Padmanabhan Ananthan in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona and Shailesh Kuber)
((Padmanabhan.Ananthan@thomsonreuters.com;))
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