ASCO: Coherus and Junshi's toripalimab meets goal in NPC

China’s Shanghai Junshi Biosciences (HKEX: 1877) and US biosimilars company Coherus BioSciences (Nasdaq: CHRS) have released positive results from the pivotal study JUPITER-02, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase III clinical trial evaluating toripalimab plus chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC).

The results with toripalimab, which has been billed as a potential challenger to established immuno-oncology options, notably Merck & Co’s (NYSE: MRK) Keytruda (pembrolizumab), are due to be presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2021 meeting on June 6.

In February this year, Coherus entered into a collaboration with the Chinese firm for rights to its anti-PD-1 antibody in the USA and Canada, which could be worth as much as $1.1billion to the latter.