AbbVie's PARP Inhibitor Veliparib Shows Positive Phase 3 Results Across Four Cancer Types

Compiled by Fan Dongdong

At the ESMO Congress, AbbVie announced that two Phase 3 clinical trials of its PARP inhibitor veliparib in combination with chemotherapy achieved positive results, meeting their primary endpoints.

The VELIA study was conducted in patients with newly diagnosed advanced epithelial ovarian cancer, fallopian tube cancer, or primary peritoneal cancer. AbbVie stated that the drug achieved positive results across all three tumor types:Patients receiving carboplatin and paclitaxel in combination with veliparib had a higher median progression-free survival compared to those receiving carboplatin and paclitaxel alone.。

In addition, AbbVie released data from the Phase 3 BROCADE3 trial, which evaluated the efficacy of carboplatin and paclitaxel in combination with veliparib for the treatment of BRCA-mutated, triple-negative, or HR+/HER2- advanced or metastatic breast cancer. The results showed thatProgression-free survival reached 14.5 months in patients receiving veliparib combination therapy, compared with 12.6 months in the placebo group., although statistically significant, it does not constitute a breakthrough.

Veliparib’s competitors also delivered good news at this conference. GSK announced positive results from the PRIMA clinical trial: in patients with advanced ovarian cancer who had responded to platinum-based chemotherapy, maintenance therapy with Zejula versus placebo reduced the risk of disease progression or death by up to 38% regardless of biomarker status (HR=0.62, 95% CI, 0.50–0.75; p<0.001), and extended progression-free survival by more than 5 months (13.8 months vs. 8.2 months).

Another competitor, AstraZeneca’s Lynparza, was the first PARP inhibitor approved by the U.S. FDA. The company announced results from the randomized, double-blind PAOLA-1 trial of Lynparza, which demonstrated that Lynparza in combination with bevacizumab provided a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival compared to the active control group (22.1 months vs. 16.6 months), while reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 41%.

Therefore, foreign media outlet FierceBiotech pointed out that although the veliparib combination can extend progression-free survival in cancer patients, the prospects for this drug to secure a long-term position in the highly competitive market based on these research results are not optimistic. On one hand, its marketability in competition with Zejula and Lynparza remains to be seen; on the other hand, veliparib’s sales performance over the past three years does not appear to have enhanced the drug’s market appeal.

Reference Source: AbbVie’s PARP inhibitor veliparib finally gets a win, but can it compete?