AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo have announced that their new drug Datroway significantly improved survival in patients with aggressive triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). The results were revealed at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Berlin.
In the trial, patients receiving Datroway achieved a median overall survival of 23.7 months versus 18.7 months for those treated with standard chemotherapy. This shows a clear survival benefit, which is rare for this challenging subtype.
Datroway is a type of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC). It delivers chemotherapy directly to tumour cells while sparing healthy tissue, improving effectiveness and reducing side-effects.
Importantly, patients on Datroway also stayed on treatment longer and had lower rates of treatment drop-out compared with chemo-only patients. That suggests the drug was better tolerated.
With this success, the partnership aims to position Datroway alongside their other ADC — Enhertu — to cover up to 90% of breast cancer cases. This marks a major shift toward targeted therapies replacing traditional chemo.
