3 Big Pharma companies, 33 phase 3 trials: The race for supremacy in an ADC field

On June 14, Merck & Co. posted a new entry on ClinicalTrials.gov. The study, coded TroFuse-020, marked the 10th global phase 3 trial the New Jersey pharma has logged for its Kelun Biotech-partnered antibody-drug conjugate, sacituzumab tirumotecan, in about eight months.

And Merck isn’t finished. “A bunch” of pivotal trials for the drug, also known as sac-TMT or MK-2870, are being devised behind closed doors at the company, Eliav Barr, M.D., chief medical officer at Merck Research Laboratories, said in a recent interview before the latest trial registration.

Such an extensive late-stage development plan for a drug that has not even cleared one single global phase 3 trial is rare, if not completely unheard of, in the life...