Health Care & Insurance  September 26, 2016

Array BioPharma shares surge 70 percent on trial results for melanoma drugs

BOULDER — Array BioPharma (Nasdaq: ARRY) saw its share price rocket up more than 70 percent on Monday after the Boulder-based company announced positive trial results for a pair of drugs in the treatment of melanoma.

Array’s Columbus trial is looking at the combination of binimetinib and encorafenib in the treatment of BRAF-mutant melanoma versus treatment with vemurafenib, a drug already available on the market. Part 1 results of the Columbus trial, released Monday, showed progression-free survival (PFS) of the Array combination of 14.9 months compared to a PFS of 7.3 months for patients treated with vemurafenib.

Subsequent trial results will look at overall survival, as well as the use of encorfenib alone versus vemurafenib. But Monday’s results looked at the study’s primary endpoint of PFS.

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Array’s share price, which closed Friday at $3.65, was at a 52-week high of $6.23 by early afternoon Monday.

“We look forward to working with global regulatory authorities as they evaluate our planned submission,” Array CEO Ron Squarer said in a news release.

Array, which has multiple cancer drugs in the development and clinical-trial pipelines, inked a deal last year with French drugmaker Pierre Fabre to globally develop and commercialize binimetinib and encorafenib. Array received an upfront payment of $30 million and was also entitled as part of the deal to receive up to $425 million in milestone payments. Array maintains the rights to commercialize the drugs in the United States, Canada, Japan, Korea and Israel, while Pierre Fabre will have rights to both products in all other countries.

Array’s share price has been on a bit of a rollercoaster this year. In June, the company submitted a New Drug Application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the use of binimetinib alone in the treatment of a different type of melanoma.

Array suffered a setback in August when AstraZeneca reported poor Phase 3 trial results for lung-cancer drug selumetinib, which had been developed by Array and licensed to AstraZeneca. That was followed, however, earlier this month by news that the FDA had accepted the NDA for binimetinib in the treatment of NRAS-mutant melanoma and set a target decision date of June 30, 2017.

BOULDER — Array BioPharma (Nasdaq: ARRY) saw its share price rocket up more than 70 percent on Monday after the Boulder-based company announced positive trial results for a pair of drugs in the treatment of melanoma.

Array’s Columbus trial is looking at the combination of binimetinib and encorafenib in the treatment of BRAF-mutant melanoma versus treatment with vemurafenib, a drug already available on the market. Part 1 results of the Columbus trial, released Monday, showed progression-free survival (PFS) of the Array combination of 14.9 months compared to a PFS of 7.3 months for patients…

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