The Pharmaceutical News

This Weeks Cancer Drug News

The past week’s news has been dominated by a couple of major proposed acquisitions, plus FDA approvals for two new drugs for the treatment of abasal cell carcinom (BCC) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Amgen

Firstly, Amgen has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Micromet for approximately US$1.16 billion. Micromet was founded in 1993 by a team of scientists from the University of Munich with a firm belief in the potential of T-cell-based therapies to treat cancer. The company has demonstrated the clinical potential of its technology, referred to as bi-specific T-cell engager (BiTE), with the publication of results from a Phase I trial of its BiTE antibody, blinatumomab, in patients with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Headquartered in Rockville, MD, with a research facility in Munich, Germany, Micromet is now an integrated biopharmaceutical company with a pipeline of promising drug candidates, a clinically-validated technology platform and strong BiTE antibody partnerships with industry leaders.

Celgene

Also looking to boost its pipeline is Celgene, which has agreed to buy Avila Therapeutics for up to US$925 million. Avila is pioneering a method to discover and develop new small-molecule drugs that achieve protein silencing to create highly-effective therapies for a broad range of diseases. It is developing a pipeline of novel, targeted covalent drugs with a current focus on cancer, autoimmune diseases and hepatitis C. Avila is able to silence the activity of disease-causing proteins by selectively forming strong and durable covalent bonds. While there are approved covalent drugs that arose from serendipitous discovery, Avila is the first company to design and develop targeted covalent drugs robustly, systematically and across the vast majority of target classes. This is enabled by its proprietary Avilomics platform.

For US patients with BCC or RCC, the FDA approval of two new groundbreaking drugs will come as welcome news. Approval of Pfizer’s Inlyta (axitinib) for the treatment of advanced RCC after failure of one prior systemic therapy was based on data showing that it produced a median progression-free survival of 6.7 months compared with just 4.7 months for sorafenib, the current standard-of-care. Inlyta is the first targeted therapy to be approved in the US for this indication. The product adds to the company’s portfolio of treatment options for RCC patients, which also includes Sutent (sunitinib) and Torisel (temsirolimus).

Genentech’s (Roche)

Genentech’s (Roche) Erivedge (vismodegib), which was developed in collaboration with Curis, has gained approved for the once-daily treatment of adults with BCC that has metastasised or recurred following surgery, or that their healthcare provider decides cannot be treated with surgery or radiation. This first-in-class Hedgehog pathway inhibitor is the only FDA-approved medicine for people with advanced forms of BCC. This is the second skin cancer drug that Genentech has gained approval for in the last six months, following the August 2011 clearance of Zelboraf (vemurafenib) for the treatment of BRAF V600E mutation-positive, inoperable or metastatic melanoma.

Article source: Cancer Drug News, edited by Johanna Shiu.



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