Roche Abandons AKT Prostate Cancer Asset

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Another one bites the dust ☹️

Roche Abandons AKT Prostate Cancer Asset

Published: Feb 02, 2023 By Tristan Manalac

Courtesy Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Roche is dropping its investigational AKT inhibitor ipatasertib, which was being assessed in a Phase III trial for castration-resistant prostate cancer, the company revealed Thursday in its 2022 full-year financial report.

Aside from ipatasertib, Roche is also punting its early-stage candidate efmarodocokin alfa, which was in a Phase I trial for acute graft-versus-host disease, zinpentraxin alfa, a candidate for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, and its Alzheimer’s hopeful, gantenerumab.

The company had previously announced it was discontinuing gantenerumab after the drug failed two Phase III studies.

Ipatasertib is an orally administered small molecule inhibitor of three isoforms of the AKT protein, which in turn cripples a crucial signaling cascade in cancer cell growth and proliferation.

Roche has had a difficult time trying to get ipatasertib through the clinic. In June 2020, its subsidiary, Genentech, reported the candidate hit only one of two co-primary endpoints in the Phase III IPATential150 trial in metastatic CRPC.

Ipatasertib suffered another late-stage defeat in February 2021, when the company announced it was terminating the Phase III IPATunity130 study in hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. The candidate fell short of both efficacy endpoints in that study.

[GeorgeGlass]

That sucks