Array shares rise on lung cancer, melanoma results

Array BioPharma Inc's experimental lung cancer drug, selumetinib, w as shown to increase survival by an additional 4.2 months over chemotherapy alone, according to new data released on Wednesday.

The company also reported encouraging results of a new melanoma treatment, and its shares rose 5 percent after-hours.

Array, which has licensed the lung cancer drug to AstraZeneca Plc, announced last year that a mid-stage trial had failed to meet its main goal of showing statistically significant improvement in overall survival.

The full trial results - released ahead of next month's annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) - show median survival for patients treated with selumetinib and chemotherapy of 9.4 months, compared with 5.2 months for chemotherapy alone.

Thirty-seven percent of patients responded to the drug, while none responded to chemotherapy alone.

For Array's experimental melanoma drug MEK162, early results showed that among 29 patients with a mutation in the BRAF gene, there was one confirmed and six unconfirmed partial responses and 9 patients with stable disease. About half of all melanoma patients are estimated to have such a mutation.

Of 13 patients with a mutation in the NRAS gene, there were two confirmed partial responses, one unconfirmed partial response and four patients with stable disease. The NRAS mutation occurs in around 15 percent of melanomas.

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(Reuters)