Bristol-Myers Reports Positive Survival Results In Trials Of Lung-cancer Treatment

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. shares rose more than 2% in premarket trade Tuesday, a day after the drugs company said two trials of its Opdivo treatment for non-small cell lung cancer showed sustained survival results in patients who had already been treated for the disease. "The Kaplan-Meier curve from this study suggests a prolonged survival benefit for a subset of patients," Suresh Ramalingam, head of medical oncology, Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, said in a statement, referring to a statistic used to measure survival rates over time. Bristol-Myers is testing Opdivo on a range of tumor types in more than 50 trials that use it as a monotherapy or in combination with other therapies. Shares are down 2% in the year so far, while the S&P 500 has lost 6.7%.