NVCR News & Events

Zymeworks (ZYME) announced the appointment of Kristin Stafford as CFO, effective April 1. Stafford recently served as Senior Vice President, Chief Accounting Officer for Royalty Pharma plc, since December 2018. Prior to this position, she served as Vice President, Finance of Royalty Pharma and CFO of BioPharma Credit,an affiliate of Royal Pharma, from 2016 to 2018. Previously, Stafford was a director at Ernst & Young Capital Markets in London, specializing in U.S. transactions involving European life sciences companies. She also previously managed the external SEC reporting for iHeartMedia and was an auditor at Deloitte. Stafford is currently a Board Member at Novocure (NVCR). She is a CPA and holds a B.Sc. degree in business administration from Sonoma State University.

Novocure announced positive results today from the Phase 2 PANOVA-4 trial of Tumor Treating Fields, TTFields, therapy concomitant with atezolizumab, gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel as a first-line treatment for metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, mPDAC. PANOVA-4 met its pre-specified primary endpoint, achieving a statistically significant improvement in disease control rate, DCR, compared to the DCR reported in the Phase 3 MPACT study used as the historical control. The DCR in patients treated with TTFields therapy concomitantly with atezolizumab and gem/nab-pac was 74.4% compared to a DCR of 48% in patients receiving gem/nab-pac alone in the historical control. Secondary endpoints in PANOVA-4 include objective response rate and overall survival. The ORR in patients treated with TTFields therapy concomitantly with atezolizumab and gem/nab-pac was 34.6% and median OS was 9.7 months. Additional secondary endpoints were progression-free survival, one-year survival rate, progression-free survival at six months, duration of response, and rate of patients with treatment emergent adverse events.

Novocure announced that Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare approved reimbursement for Optune Lua through the country's National Health Insurance coverage. Optune Lua is approved in Japan for concurrent use with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in adult patients with unresectable advanced/recurrent NSCLC who progressed on or after platinum-based chemotherapy.