FDA puts AbbVie cancer drug on hold

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has placed a clinical hold on AbbVie’s trial of cancer drug, Venclexta after a review of data found a higher proportion of deaths in the arm of the study.
AbbVie have commented that the hold doesn’t have any impact on any of the approved indications for the drug, and any patients currently enrolled and receiving the therapy may continue with the treatment. It has been advised that no new patients should be enrolled in trials until further analysis of the data from trial is completed.
The drug is already approved to treat other types of cancer, including chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and acute myeloid leukaemia. It brought in $344 million revenue for AbbVie in 2018.