AstraZeneca/Merck come out of ASCO GU with a big win over J&J in battle over prostate cancer franchises

The ASCO GU conference has been spotlighting some key advances  — and setbacks — for some of the top cancer drugs on the market.

At the top of the win list is AstraZeneca’s Lynparza, their market-leading PARP inhibitor shared with Merck. Added with J&J’s 25-year-old prostate cancer drug Zytiga (abiraterone) in the Phase III PROpel study for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer delivered a radiographic PFS of 24.8 months, compared to 16.6 months for Zytiga alone in frontline cases.