The American global biopharmaceutical company AbbVie (ABBV, Financial) announced today, Dec. 3, that the up to seven-year investigation of a monotherapy with its Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor IMBRUVICA showed durable responses with an 89% overall response rate among 132 Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia or Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma patients.
The progression-free survival rates, which were estimated for a period of seven years, indicate that the treatment with AbbVie’s Imbruvica worked well for 80% of newly diagnosed patients and 32% of refractory or relapsed patients.
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia begins in the bone marrow before crowding out healthy blood cells centring on a specific line of white cells called lymphocytes. These patients cannot easily fight off infections, because the lymphocytes don’t reach a complete stage of maturation.
Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia patients present a high count of white blood cells and are usually symptom-free. Instead, in small lymphocytic lymphoma patients there is no evidence of the disease in the blood, but the leukaemia appears with enlarged lymph nodes.
Imbruvica blocks signals that stimulate malignant B lymphocytes to grow and proliferate uncontrollably. Imbruvica is the trade name under which AbbVie sells Ibrutinib.
“Starting treatment with ibrutinib as early as possible for CLL and SLL provides the best efficacy over the long-term – an important factor that treating physicians should consider,” said John C. Byrd, M.D., Leukaemia Research’s Warren Brown Chair, Professor of Medicine at the Ohio State University and the lead investigator of the trial.
Imbruvica is a relevant contributor to AbbVie's top line of income statement. Total revenues of AbbVie are determined for about 8-10% by the sale of ibrutinib. In the second quarter of 2018, the Lake Bluff, Illinois-based health care company invoiced Imbruvica (ibrutinib) customers for $850 million, reflecting a nearly 36% increase from the prior-year quarter. AbbVie makes sales of approximately $3 billion every year from the sale of the product.
AbbVie closed at $94.27 per share on Friday with a market capitalization of about $135.24 billion. The stock has a price-sales ratio of 4.60 versus an industry median of 3.1 and a price-earnings ratio of 19.48 compared to an industry median of 23.77.
AbbVie went down 3% so far this year, pushing the forward dividend yield up to 4.54%. The industry has a median forward dividend yield of 1.66%.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stock mentioned in this article.
