GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer Shine

Pfizer's shares were at $24.19 at the market close on Friday.

Last year at ASCO, biotech giant Genentech(DNA Quote) stole the show with impressive data on its proposed lung cancer drug Avastin.

Avastin, which is currently approved to treat colon cancer, is being tested in phase III clinical trials to treat kidney, breast, pancreatic, non-small cell lung, prostate and ovarian cancers, according to Genentech's Web site.

Also on Saturday, GlaxoSmithKline(GSK Quote) released new data on its experimental breast cancer drug Tykerb.

According to trial results, breast cancer patients given Tykerb plus the oral chemotherapy drug capecitabine, known by the brand name Xeloda, saw their cancer more effectively controlled than with Xeloda alone. While patients receiving Xeloda alone went 19.7 weeks before their disease got worse, patients on the combination of drugs went 36.9 weeks before their cancer progressed.

And while 11 out of 161 patients on Xeloda alone saw their cancer spread to the brain, just four out of 160 patients on the combination saw brain metastases, a condition with significant unmet medical need. Doctors believe that Tykerb, unlike some other breast cancer drugs like Genentech's Herceptin, has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier to reach brain tumors.

The phase III study involved patients whose cancer had progressed despite prior treatments with Herceptin, which was also highly touted at last year's ASCO meeting. Phase III is the stage of trials conducted immediately before a drug is submitted for Food and Drug Administration marketing approval.

"Trastuzumab is a very effective drug that has substantially improved the available treatments for women with metastatic breast cancer that produces large amounts of the HER2/neu protein," said Dr. Charles Geyer Jr. of the Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, the lead investigator. "However, because [Herceptin] eventually stops controlling these cancers, there is a need for effective alternative treatments that block the function of HER2/neu in another way," he said.