Here’s Why Seattle Genetics Climbed Higher Today

Shares of Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ: SGEN) are up 15% at 11:55 a.m. EDT after the biotech reported positive results for the HER2CLIMB phase 2 study testing tucatinib in patients with late-stage breast cancer.

Treatment with tucatinib plus Roche's Herceptin and Xeloda reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 46% compared to Herceptin and Xeloda alone. The triple combination also reduced the risk of death by 34% compared to Herceptin and Xeloda alone. Looking at the hard-to-treat patients whose breast cancer had moved to the patients' brain, the triple combination reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 52%.

Tucatinib certainly isn't a cure, but the improvements over the control treatment are quite impressive and suggest the drug will be quickly adopted by doctors for late-stage patients once it's approved. More importantly, the solid efficacy data indicate tucatinib is likely to help earlier-stage patients, which would substantially increase the drug's potential market.

Source Fool.com