Cancer Gold Rush Sparks Billions in Spending Over Unproven Drugs

In one of the biggest cancer spending sprees in years, pharmaceutical giants are pouring billions into developing treatments linking old drugs together — with little proof they can help patients live longer.

It’s an industry gold rush based on a tantalizing prospect: a new class of treatments that might dethrone Merck & Co.’s Keytruda, an immunotherapy used in a range of cancers and one of the world’s best-selling medicines. The drugs aren’t based on a breakthrough discovery. Instead, they combine versions of Keytrudaand Roche Holding AG’s Avastin into a single drug. With the individual therapies, combinations have been tested repeatedly with limited success in ...