By Stephen Nakrosis 
 

AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) on Friday said the results of a Phase 3 study of Imbruvica (ibrutinib) in metastatic pancreatic cancer didn't meet its primary endpoint of improving progression-free survival or overall survival benefit among the study population.

"We continue to evaluate the potential of Imbruvica as a cancer treatment alone or in combination for a variety of cancer types," said Danelle James, M.D., M.A.S., the head of clinical science at Pharmacyclics LLC, an AbbVie company. "We are passionately advancing our robust ibrutinib scientific development program to continue to advance cancer standards of care, particularly in areas that have unmet medical need."

The trial evaluated ibrutinib in combination with certain chemotherapy agents versus a placebo with the chemotherapy agents. AbbVie said the study didn't show statistically significant progression-free or overall survival benefit with ibrutinib in combination compared with the placebo combination.

Imbruvica has been available in the U.S. since 2013 and is FDA-approved for use with certain blood cancers and in chronic graft-versus-host-disease, AbbVie said.

--Write to Stephen Nakrosis at stephen.nakrosis@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 18, 2019 17:07 ET (22:07 GMT)