BRIEF — Chi-Med keeps up fruquintinib momentum at ASCO

Hutchison China MediTech Limited, a biopharma which is majority owned by the conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings and which goes by the name Chi-Med, has presented further data from the FRESCO Phase III study in 416 patients with locally advanced or metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) at the ongoing 2018 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting.

Fruquintinib is a highly selective and potent oral inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors 1, 2 and 3. The FRESCO dataset is a part of the New Drug Application filed and accepted by the China National Drug Administration. Additional clinical trials are ongoing in China for lung and gastric cancer, as well as in the USA.

In FRESCO, fruquintinib demonstrated a statistically significant and clinically meaningful benefit in third-line metastatic CRC patients in China.

The new analysis, presented at ASCO, explored possible effects of prior target therapy on the efficacy and safety of fruquintinib by analyzing the subgroups of patients with prior target therapy (PTT) and those without.

Results showed that fruquintinib had clinically meaningful benefits in third-line metastatic CRC patients regardless of PTT without observed accumulative toxicity.