Bristol’s filing withdrawal sets up another US vs EU conflict

Blink and you will have missed the significance of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s decision to pull its EU filing for Opdivo plus Yervoy in first-line lung cancer. The move, revealed after market close on Friday, on the face of it looks like a predictable acknowledgement of the uselessness of analysing the combo’s Checkmate-227 study based on patients’ tumour mutation burden; similar considerations saw a US submission pulled a year ago. Not so: Bristol quietly revealed that it had added to the EU filing data from Checkmate-227’s original part 1a – but the EMA rejected this, citing the study’s “multiple protocol changes”. Apparently the US FDA has no such qualms, given that it has agreed to review Opdivo/Yervoy based on a pooled result of part 1 of the study, an even shakier exploratory dataset than part 1a. Yet again the US FDA seems to be behaving more leniently than its EU opposite number. Those who still rate Bristol’s EU chances might have another hope: the company has vowed to file on the basis of Checkmate-9LA, which yielded a survival benefit favouring Opdivo plus Yervoy last October (Bristol might play a role in front-line lung cancer after all, October 23, 2019).