ImClone updates data from lung cancer trial

BOSTON (Reuters) - ImClone Systems Inc said on Friday that a trial of its cancer drug Erbitux did not significantly improve overall survival in a trial of patients with the most common form of lung cancer.

In the 676-patient trial, known as BMS-099, patients taking Erbitux in combination with the therapies taxane and carboplatin had average overall survival of 9.7 months, compared with 8.4 months for patients taking chemotherapy alone.

The results did not reach statistical significance, though the company said there were not enough patients in the trial to detect an improvement in overall survival with the same degree of statistical precision as in its larger 1,125-patient trial known as FLEX.

Results from the FLEX trial, reported earlier, showed a statistically significant improvement in overall survival in patients receiving Erbitux in combination with the background regimen of vinorelbine and cisplatin.

ImClone and partner Bristol-Myers Squibb plan to pursue a regulatory filing with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke)