Tivantinib

Drug Overview

Tivantinib (ArQule/Daiichi Sankyo/Kyowa Hakko Kirin) is an orally available small molecule inhibitor of the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) receptor, c-MET. Aberrant expression of HGF/c-MET promotes angiogenesis, cancer cell proliferation, and metastasis via growth factor receptors and other oncogenic pathways, and has been observed in many tumor types including hepatocellular cancer.

Analyst Outlook

ArQule/Daiichi Sankyo/Kyowa Hakko Kirin are positioning tivantinib as a second-line therapy for advanced metastatic hepatocellular cancer (HCC) patients who have documented overexpression of c-MET (MET diagnostic-high). If approved, tivantinib will not benefit from uptake in the larger proportion of second-line HCC patients who are not MET diagnostic-high. However, strong Phase II efficacy data suggest tivantinib has an opportunity to become the standard of care for the MET diagnostic-high subpopulation, so sales could still be high. There may be a future scenario where tivantinib would come under intense competitive pressure from Cometriq (cabozantinib; Exelixis/Swedish Orphan Biovitrum), which is also a c-MET inhibitor targeting the second-line setting.