AstraZeneca share price rises amid Lynparza approval

AstraZeneca’s share price (LON:AZN) as climbed higher in London in today’s session as the company’s drug Lynparza was approved in Europe as a first-line maintenance treatment for women with BRCA-mutated advanced ovarian cancer. The news marks a boost for the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker, which has bet on oncology as one of its key therapy areas to propel growth going forward.

As of 09:40 BST, AstraZeneca’s share price had added 1.34 percent to 6,335.00p, outperforming the broader UK market, with the benchmark FTSE 100 index currently standing 0.64 percent higher at 7,404.37 points. The group’s shares have added more than 17 percent to their value over the past year, as compared with about a three-percent fall in the Footsie.

Lynparza approval

AstraZeneca and MSD Inc announced in a statement today that the European Commission had approved olaparib, marketed as Lynparza, as a first-line maintenance treatment for women with BRCA-mutated advanced ovarian cancer.

“This approval sets the stage for a new standard of care in the EU for women with ovarian cancer and a BRCA mutation,” Dave Fredrickson, Executive Vice President at AstraZeneca’s Oncology Business Unit, commented in the statement.

AstraZeneca said that this is the third indication for the treatment in the EU and that the companies are exploring additional trials in ovarian cancer, including the ongoing Phase III PAOLA-1 trial, which is testing Lynparza in combination with bevacizumab as a 1st-line maintenance treatment for women with newly-diagnosed, advanced, stage IIIB-IV high grade serous or endometrioid ovarian cancer, regardless of BRCA status.

Today’s update comes after earlier this month, the results from a late-stage trial showed that Lynparza had nearly doubled the time patients lived without disease progression from germline BRCA-mutated metastatic pancreatic cancer.

Analysts on pharmco

Deutsche Bank reaffirmed the FTSE 100 company as a ‘buy,’ without specifying a target on the AstraZeneca share price. According to MarketBeat, the blue-chip group currently has a consensus ‘hold’ rating and an average valuation of 6,497.06p.