Biotech Strategy Blog

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Posts tagged ‘Prostate Cancer Pipeline’

Zytiga European Prostate Cancer approval may kill Jevtana sales

With the collapse of the Dendreon share price today following poor sales data (Adam Feuerstein on The Street has an excellent write up about this), attention has again focused on the prostate cancer market.

Zytiga (abiraterone acetate) was recently approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), following FDA approval earlier this year.

The EMA Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use granted the marketing authorization for Zytiga at it’s July 2011 meeting.  The approval noted,

“The poor prognosis of the target patient population represents a high unmet medical need while the novel mechanism of action of abiraterone has the potential to offer an alternative therapeutic option for these patients.”

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AUA 2011 New Prostate Cancer products in development beyond the androgen axis

AUA 2011 Washington DC © Pieter Droppert 300x225 AUA 2011 New Prostate Cancer products in development beyond the androgen axisThere is a lot of focus at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) here in Washington DC on metastatic castrate resistant Prostate Cancer (mCRPC), and the recently FDA approved adrenal steroid inhibitor, abiraterone acetate (Zytiga®).

Drugs in development that target the androgen receptor, such as MDV3100, are also generating a lot of interest from urologists.

However, Oliver Sartor (Tulane) in the Saturday morning satellite symposia that I attended, focused on emerging therapies in CRPC, beyond the androgen axis. His hypothesis:

“Cancers are devious and some of the mechanisms of AR activation appear to be ligand-independent and resistant to all current androgen-axis targeted therapies.”

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