ASCO 2026 preview – recent wins come under the spotlight

Several high-profile clinical trials are set to come under the spotlight in late-breaking presentations at the ASCO conference, after being toplined as positive by their developers in recent weeks.

These include AstraZeneca’s Emerald-3 liver cancer study, which has shown a PFS benefit for one of its Imfinzi/Imjudo cohorts, and the Successor-2 trial of Bristol Myers Squibb’s Pomalyst follow-on mezigdomide. Also featuring among the late-breakers will be Ideaya’s PKC inhibitor darovasertib, which scored a remarkable win in its Optimum-02 uveal melanoma study just 10 days ago.

Curiously, however, Ideaya has already revealed significant detail about that last win, disclosing response rate and PFS numbers, with statistics, and even publishing the PFS curves showing a darovasertib/Xalkori combo’s superiority over Keytruda or Opdivo/Yervoy. For it not to have fallen foul of ASCO’s strict disclosure rules Ideaya must have kept important information back for the conference itself.

That’s not a problem for Emerald-3 or Successor-2, which have only been said to have been positive for PFS. One cause for discussion at ASCO should be the fact Emerald-3, whose control cohort gave liver cancer patients TACE alone, was so far successful only for an Imfinzi/Imjudo/TACE/Lenvima quad, and not for a triplet that excluded Lenvima.

And similarly, Pfizer’s Talapro-3 trial of Talzenna, Incyte’s Frontmind study of Monjuvi, and Dizal’s Wu-Kong28 confirmatory test of Zegfrovy are known only to have scored topline wins. Their ASCO late-breakers will put real data behind these claims, though for Dizal the biggest problem is probably a lack of commercial infrastructure to sell its already approved drug.

Information about ASCO’s programme became public this week with the unveiling of titles for all ASCO presentations. The abstract texts remain under wraps until 21 May, while late-breakers won’t go live until the morning of their presentation. ApexOnco has separately profiled the late-breakers that will feature in ASCO’s Sunday plenary session.

Selected ASCO 2026 late-breakers*

Note: *excludes plenary session, profiled separately. Source: ASCO.

Similarly to Ideaya, Karyopharm has revealed a substantial amount of detail about the result of its Sentry trial combining Xpovio with Jakafi in front-line myelofibrosis, so it’s not clear what additional information is being kept back to justify its ASCO late-breaker.

In March Karyopharm spelled out the extent of Xpovio’s win on spleen volume reduction, and its miss on symptom score – both with numbers and statistics, with data on overall survival to boot. Perhaps the ASCO presentation will show survival curves, and give more details on safety, though much about the latter has already been disclosed too.

Conversely, a few ASCO late-breakers concern studies about which very little has been revealed. This includes the Prostact-Global trial of Telix’s anti-PSMA radioconjugate 177Lu-rosopatamab in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer; earlier this month Telix’s disclosure about the lead-in stage of this study revealed only data on tolerability and pharmacokinetics.

And ASCO seems not to be shying away from highlighting failed studies, two of which feature among the late-breakers. One is the first-line Persevera trial of Roche’s oral SERD giredestrant, which failed on PFS last month, and the other is the Matrix study of Merck KGaA’s ATR inhibitor tuvusertib, which that company quietly removed from its pipeline in its fourth-quarter 2025 presentation.

ASCO 2026 takes place in Chicago on 29 May to 2 June.