AstraZeneca Breast-Cancer Drug Misses Goal in Late-Stage Trial

AstraZeneca said its new breast-cancer pill missed the key goal of slowing the disease from worsening in a late-stage clinical trial.

AstraZeneca continues to study the pill in other trials, both as standalone therapy and in combination with other drugs.The U.K. drugmaker evaluated its Etcamah medicine, in combination with Pfizer’s Ibrance, as a first-line treatment for patients with a type of advanced breast cancer that hadn’t received any systemic treatment for advanced disease, it said late Friday.

The drug combination showed a numerical improvement in delaying signs that patients’ cancer worsened compared with the standard therapy, but it wasn’t enough to be considered statistically significant, AstraZeneca said.

Safety data were consistent with the known profile of each drug, it added.

The Etcamah trial results came a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted approval for the drug, based on the results of another trial, for advanced breast cancer upon the detection of a specific mutation. The company continues to study the pill in other trials, both as standalone therapy or in combination with other drugs.

“Early breast cancer represents an important opportunity, and we remain confident in the long-term potential of Etcamah in the early setting as we advance our broader program,” AstraZeneca’s executive vice president for oncology hematology research and development, Susan Galbraith, said.

AstraZeneca and partner Daiichi Sankyo separately said Monday that their Enhertu drug delivered benefits for patients with a form of advanced lung cancer in another late-stage study, leading to a six-month improvement in the time they lived without the disease worsening relative to the standard therapy.

Write to Adrià Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com