New breast cancer drug data a boost for Eli Lilly

New York

ELI Lilly staked its claim for a slice of sales in a new class of breast cancer drugs on Sunday as clinical data showed adding its medicine abemaciclib to standard therapy reduced the risk of disease progression by 46 per cent.

Experts at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress in Madrid said the experimental drug's efficacy was comparable to that of rival drugs from Pfizer and Novartis already on the market.

Abemaciclib, like Pfizer's Ibrance and Novartis's Kisqali, belongs to a class of oral medicines called CDK 4/6 inhibit…