Arcus Biosciences (NYSE:RCUS) shares are tumbling 31% in pre-open trading Wednesday after rival Roche's (OTC:RHHBY) anti-TIGIT Drug Tecentriq failed to meet its co-primary endpoint of progression-free survival in a Phase 3 trial to treat people with PD-L1-high locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Mizuho analyst Mara Goldstein expects pressure on Arcus shares given the significant role that ARC-7/domvanalimab plays in the stock's valuation. This despite a meaningful differentiation in the doublet arm of domvanalimab+zimberelimab versus zimberelimab alone, Goldstein added.
"SKYSCRAPER-01's result will, in our view, cast a large shadow on the RCUS program as well as others, and while it is possible that the failure is isolated to the SKYSCRAPER program and not generalizable to domvanalimab + zimberelimab, this differentiation is likely to be marginalized until the ARC-7 data is available in 2H22," Goldstein commented.