Medtech innovation and oncology trial data dominated the health and bio landscape, with Smith Nephew unveiling a purpose-built surgical instrument for hip procedures while AstraZeneca delivered a split verdict on its lung cancer pipeline, one trial halted for futility, another clearing its bar with a first-in-class result.
Smith Nephew launches adjustable-tip hip surgical wand
Smith Nephew (LSE:SN.), the FTSE 100 medical technology group trading at 1262.5p, has launched the FLOW FLEXTEND COBLATION Wand, a radiofrequency resection device engineered specifically for complex hip procedures. The instrument extends the company's FLOW~IQ platform with an adjustable-angle tip aimed at improving surgical access and tissue targeting in hard-to-reach hip, knee and shoulder anatomy, addressing what Smith Nephew describes as a persistent gap in the market, where surgeons have largely made do with knee instruments lengthened for hip use rather than tools built from the ground up for hip anatomy.
The wand carries forward FLOW~IQ technology that Smith Nephew says has been clinically and commercially validated since 2016, automatically balancing saline outflow with COBLATION energy to give surgeons a choice between precision and speed depending on the clinical scenario. A "set and forget" locking mechanism lets surgeons fix the tip at a desired angle and hold that position throughout a procedure without repeated adjustment, a design feature intended to reduce interruption during central compartment work.
"The articulation gives the FLOW FLEXTEND COBLATION Wand a significant advantage, and a lot more versatility in the central compartment without capsular disruption than any of the other instruments I have used before," said Joshua D. Harris, Houston Methodist.
The launch extends three decades of development behind Smith Nephew's COBLATION platform, a franchise the company credits with demonstrating improved outcomes over mechanical debridement in earlier clinical work. A device purpose-built for hip anatomy, rather than adapted from knee tooling, gives Smith Nephew a sharper pitch to hip surgeons and reinforces its positioning in sports medicine instrumentation, a incremental but credibility-building move for a franchise the company is clearly leaning on as a growth driver.
AstraZeneca halts lung cancer trial after futility signal
AstraZeneca (LSE:AZN), up 0.611% at 11530.0p, is discontinuing the eVOLVE-Lung02 Phase III trial, which had pitted volrustomig plus chemotherapy against pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer patients with lower PD-L1 tumour expression. An Independent Data Monitoring Committee made the call after a planned review concluded the volrustomig combination was unlikely to beat the comparator arm on either progression-free survival or overall survival in this PD-L1 negative population.
The trial had enrolled 895 patients across 25 countries, and AstraZeneca said no new safety signals emerged, volrustomig's safety profile matched that of the individual medicines already characterised in earlier studies. The setback specifically concerns patients whose tumours show a less durable response to current immunotherapy regimens, the harder-to-treat subgroup the trial was designed to help.
"While we are disappointed, we will learn from this trial and are determined to continue pioneering new medicines from our industry-leading pipeline in our quest to improve outcomes for patients with lung cancer," said Susan Galbraith, president, oncology haematology R&D at AstraZeneca. The discontinuation trims one pathway in AstraZeneca's sprawling oncology pipeline, but the absence of new safety concerns limits the read-through to volrustomig's other ongoing programmes.
AstraZeneca's Tagrisso combo hits survival goals in lung cancer trial
AstraZeneca's SAFFRON Phase III trial met both its primary and key secondary endpoints, with Tagrisso (osimertinib) plus Orpathys (savolitinib) delivering statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in progression-free survival and overall survival against chemotherapy. The trial targeted patients with EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer whose tumours had developed high levels of MET overexpression or amplification after progressing on Tagrisso, a resistance mechanism that affects roughly one in three patients on third-generation EGFR inhibitors.
AstraZeneca said the 338-patient trial, run across 230 sites, is the first global Phase III study to demonstrate significant PFS and OS benefits in this specific biomarker-driven setting. Susan Galbraith, the company's president of oncology haematology R&D, said the combination aims to deliver "the first biomarker-directed, all-oral option in this setting to patients across the globe," calling the results "a critical advance for patients with EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer experiencing MET-driven resistance after osimertinib, a population with poor outcomes and no biomarker-directed treatment options available that are oral and well-tolerated."
The result gives AstraZeneca a data-backed answer to one of the most common failure modes of its own blockbuster Tagrisso franchise, potentially extending the drug's commercial life by capturing patients who would otherwise progress onto chemotherapy. Paired with the eVOLVE-Lung02 discontinuation announced the same day, it underscores a pipeline that is thinning in some areas while deepening its hold in others.
