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AstraZeneca and MSD have announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency has adopted a positive opinion, recommending a marketing authorisation of Lynparza (olaparib) tablets (300mg twice daily) for use as a maintenance therapy for patients with platinum-sensitive relapsed high grade, epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer who are in complete response or partial response to platinum-based chemotherapy.
Lynparza is recommended for treatment in this setting regardless of patients’ BRCA mutation status.
Sean Bohen, Executive Vice President, Global Medicines Development and Chief Medical Officer at AstraZeneca, said: “The data show that Lynparza provides long-term disease control, delaying the need for further chemotherapy for this broader group of women with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer, irrespective of their BRCA status. It also offers a well-characterised safety and tolerability profile, which is critical to help enable patients to stay on treatment.”
Roy Baynes, Senior Vice President and Head of Global Clinical Development, Chief Medical Officer, MSD Research Laboratories, said: “We welcome this positive opinion based upon data which indicate the potential impact for Lynparza as maintenance therapy for women with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer. We look forward to our continued work with AstraZeneca to bring Lynparza to patients in the EU.”
The CHMP recommendation is based on two randomised trials, SOLO-2 and Study 19, which showed Lynparza reduced the risk of disease progression or death for platinum-sensitive relapsed patients compared to placebo.
The most frequently observed adverse reactions across clinical trials in patients receiving Lynparza monotherapy (≥ 10%) were nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, fatigue, headache, dysgeusia, decreased appetite, dizziness and anaemia.
Lynparza, the first poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor approved, was initially licensed as a capsule formulation. The new tablet formulation will reduce dosing from eight capsules twice daily to two tablets twice daily.
Lynparza is available in nearly 60 countries and has treated more than 20,000 patients globally. It has the broadest clinical development programme of any PARP inhibitor, and AstraZeneca and MSD are working together to bring Lynparza to more patients across multiple cancers. In January 2018, Lynparza was approved by the US FDA for use in metastatic breast cancer, becoming the first PARP inhibitor licensed beyond ovarian cancer.
