JPMorgan's Take On Big Pharma's New ASCO Abstracts

Abstracts for the ASCO 2016 meeting were released on Wednesday evening. With the event only a couple of weeks away, JPMorgan analyst Chris Schott took a look at what investors can expect from the ASCO presentations of four big-name pharma companies.

For Eli Lilly and Co (NYSE: LLY), ASCO will be all about single-agent data for Abemaciclib, which Schott sees as “clearly very active in breast cancer.” In addition, Schott is still awaiting combo data from MONARCH-2 and -3.

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For Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (NYSE: BMY), Schott was impressed by the two-year survival data for Opdivo in 2L NSCLC. The updated data in the new abstract shows an overall two-year survival rate of 29 percent in non-sq and 23 percent in sq-NSCLC, higher than the respective 16 and 8 percent Docetaxel survival rates.

When it comes to Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE), the highlight of ASCO will be the confirmatory phase III data for Ibrance. The abstract indicates that Pfizer has repeated the efficacy of its phase II PALOMA-1 study, achieving a mPFS of 24.8m, an ORR of 42.1 percent and CBR of 84.9 percent.

Finally, Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK) reported some encouraging early-stage data on a Keytruda+ chemo study. The Keytruda combo study showed an uptick in ORR to 57 percent across a number of chemo regimes versus the 43 percent ORR reported last year.

JPMorgan has an Overweight rating on Bristol-Myers, Pfizer and Merck.

Disclosure: The author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.