Relay Therapeutics points to drug price negotiations for delay in potential blockbuster cancer drug

While it may ul­ti­mate­ly be im­pos­si­ble to ver­i­fy why ex­act­ly a clin­i­cal-stage biotech would de­lay a po­ten­tial new drug ap­proval, Re­lay Ther­a­peu­tics said yes­ter­day that it will push back seek­ing ap­proval for its po­ten­tial FGFR2 se­lec­tive in­hibitor RLY-4008 (li­rafu­gra­tinib) in bile duct can­cer to wait for a larg­er in­di­ca­tion be­cause of in­com­ing gov­ern­ment drug price ne­go­ti­a­tions.

The de­ci­sion comes as the com­pa­ny al­so an­nounced yes­ter­day promis­ing new da­ta for li­rafu­gra­tinib in pa­tients with FGFR2-al­tered sol­id tu­mors, demon­strat­ing ac­tiv­i­ty across sev­er­al sub-groups, in­clud­ing pa­tients with FGFR2-fu­sion tu­mors and pa­tients with FGFR2-al­tered HR+/HER2- breast can­cer, the com­pa­ny said.

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