FDA has approved Tukysa in combination with chemotherapy (trastuzumab and capecitabine) for the treatment of adult patients with advanced forms of HER2-positive breast cancer that can’t be removed with surgery, or has spread to other parts of the body, including the brain, and who have received one or more prior treatments.
Seattle Genetics sponsors Tukysa.
FDA collaborated with the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration, Health Canada, Health Sciences Authority (HSA, Singapore) and Swissmedic (SMC, Switzerland) on this review.
This is the first Project Orbis partnership between the FDA, HSA and Swissmedic. While FDA approved Tukysa, the application is still under review at the other agencies.
Collaboration among international regulators may allow patients with cancer to receive earlier access to products in other countries where there may be significant delays in regulatory submissions, regardless of whether the product has received FDA approval. Early availability of new therapies and adoption as standard of care around the world may have an impact on the increasingly international conduct of cancer clinical trials, potentially accelerating the development of anticancer products.
“The FDA’s Project Orbis provides a framework for concurrent submission and review of oncology drug applications among the FDA’s international collaborators,” Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence and acting director of the Office of Oncologic Diseases in the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement.
“We are pleased to work with our Singapore and Switzerland colleagues for the first time, and to continue working alongside our Australian and Canadian colleagues as we facilitate new treatment options for patients—like today’s first new molecular entity under Project Orbis,” Pazdur said.
“The clinical trial supporting this approval enrolled and specifically studied patients with active brain metastases in addition to the overall population enrolled, which also demonstrated benefit in this subgroup,” Pazdur said.
More than 25% of women with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer will develop brain metastases.
“We recognize that patients with cancer constitute a vulnerable population at risk of contracting the coronavirus disease,” said Pazdur. “In this critical time, we remain steadfast in our commitment to patients with cancer and doing everything we can to expedite oncology product development. Tukysa was approved four months prior to the FDA goal date, providing an example of this commitment and showing how our regular work in reviewing treatments for patients with cancer is moving forward without delay.”
Tukysa is a kinase inhibitor, and was approved for treatment after patients have taken one or more anti-HER2-based regimens in the metastatic setting. The FDA approved Tukysa based on the results of a clinical trial enrolling 612 patients who had HER2-positive advanced unresectable or metastatic breast cancer and had prior treatment with trastuzumab, pertuzumab and ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1).
Patients with previously treated and stable brain metastases, as well as those with previously treated and growing or untreated brain metastases, were eligible for the clinical trial, and 48% of enrolled patients had brain metastases at the start of the trial.
The primary endpoint was progression-free survival. The median PFS in patients who received Tukysa, trastuzumab, and capecitabine was 7.8 months compared to 5.6 months in those patients who received placebo, trastuzumab, and capecitabine.
Overall survival and PFS in patients with brain metastases at baseline were key secondary endpoints. The median overall survival in patients who received Tukysa, trastuzumab, and capecitabine was 21.9 months compared to 17.4 months in patients who received placebo, trastuzumab, and capecitabine. The median PFS in patients with brain metastases at baseline who received Tukysa, trastuzumab and capecitabine was 7.6 months compared to 5.4 months in patients who received placebo, trastuzumab and capecitabine.
