AstraZeneca (LON: AZN), the UK-based biopharmaceutical group, said in an RNS statement before Monday’s open that its cancer drug camizestrant, sold as Etcamah, missed the primary endpoint of the SERENA-4 trial in first-line breast cancer, though the shares rose on the news.
AZN shares traded at 12,106p by mid-morning today, up 3.4%, or 398p, from Friday’s close of 11,708p, and near the day’s high of 12,128.2p on volume of 573,534 shares. That leaves the stock well inside its 52-week range of 9,826.66p to 15,467.70p.
The SERENA-4 trial tested camizestrant alongside palbociclib in 1,371 adults with ER-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer who had not previously received treatment for advanced disease. AstraZeneca said the drug showed a numerical improvement in progression-free survival but missed statistical significance, with no new safety concerns. Susan Galbraith, the company’s Executive Vice President of Oncology Haematology R&D, said: “Whilst we are disappointed by the SERENA-4 outcome, it sharpens our focus on maximising the number of patients who can benefit from Etcamah today based on SERENA-6 and reinforces the importance of ESR1 testing for patients on first-line therapy.”
Camizestrant is already approved in the US, EU, Japan and other markets for a narrower use: treating patients whose tumours develop an ESR1 mutation while on first-line endocrine therapy, an indication backed by the separate SERENA-6 trial and unaffected by Monday’s miss. AstraZeneca is also running the CAMBRIA-1 and CAMBRIA-2 trials, together enrolling around 10,000 patients, testing camizestrant in earlier-stage breast cancer.
The reaction suggests the market had already priced in pipeline risk after Wainua, AstraZeneca’s heart-failure drug, failed its own Phase III trial in July, prompting broker HSBC to cut the stock to Hold with a 13,750p target.
Monday’s result narrows rather than removes camizestrant’s commercial opportunity, leaving the approved ESR1 niche and the CAMBRIA adjuvant programme as the drug’s remaining growth paths.