AstraZeneca has sought to reassure investors that its plans to replace traditional chemotherapy with a new generation of targeted drugs are on track, as it announced full trial results at a medical congress on Monday. 

David Fredrickson, executive vice-president of oncology business at AstraZeneca, said it was a “massive achievement” in a “really ambitious programme” to be presenting two clinical trials — in lung cancer and breast cancer — that showed their new treatment was better than the chemotherapy that doctors have been dependent on for over a decade. 

The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker has partnered with Daiichi Sankyo, the Japanese pharmaceutical company, on the development of two key “antibody drug conjugates”, which use antibodies to deliver a chemotherapy payload to a tumour with fewer side effects.