(Reuters) - Bristol-Myers Squibb Co said on Wednesday a late-stage trial testing a combination of its cancer drugs missed a main goal of preventing skin cancer from recurring in a certain group of patients, sending its shares down nearly 1%.
The company said the trial will continue unchanged as per the recommendation of a data monitoring committee.
The trial was testing Bristol-Myers' drugs Opdivo and Yervoy, against Opdivo alone, in patients with advanced melanoma.
The combination failed to show a statistically significant benefit in patients whose tumors had 1% or lower levels of the PD-L1 protein being targeted, the company said.
The American Cancer Society estimates that about 96,480 melanoma cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year.
Bristol-Myers shares were trading at $55.99 before the bell.
(Reporting by Dania Nadeem in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
