ASCO: Novartis’s Scemblix Beats Marketed CML Drugs In First-Line Disease

May 31 2024

• By Alaric DeArment

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The drug maker presented data from the ASC4FIRST study at ASCO, showing better efficacy and tolerability than imatinib and other tyrosine kinase inhibitors in Ph+ CML in the chronic phase.

ASCO — • Source: Scrip

While imatinib (Novartis AG’s Gleevec and generics) and several second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) have long been standards of care in frontline chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), data on Novartis’s newer drug Scemblix (asciminib) presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting could shift the standard of care, with Scemblix showing superior efficacy and tolerability to imatinib and other TKIs used for CML.

Novartis presented results from the pivotal Phase III ASC4FIRST trial at the ASCO annual meeting on 31 May, in patients...

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