Drug Review Profiles

Multiple offices within CBER worked to get a handle on the myocarditis issue in the midst of a three-month review of the COVID vaccine, with US FDA staff undertaking a quantitative benefit-risk assessment and negotiating with Pfizer on postmarket safety studies.

Despite initial concerns among FDA staff and its advisory committee about unblinding the Comirnaty pivotal trial after emergency authorization, agency’s review of the first COVID vaccine to receive full licensure suggests its safety conclusions were not adversely affected.

A timeline of the review and development of the first COVID-19 vaccine to win BLA approval.

Approximately 25% of patients in the TIVO-3 trial had prior treatment with checkpoint inhibitors, but progression-free survival in this subgroup was similar to the overall population, giving the FDA confidence about tivozanib's role in contemporary treatment regimens, Drug Review Profile finds.

After repeatedly advising against tivozanib NDA submission on the basis of interim overall survival data that suggested a negative trend, agency ultimately concluded the final analysis did not suggest a detrimental effect in third-line renal cell carcinoma even though median overall survival was shorter than for the comparator agent, Bayer’s Nexavar.

Stemline Therapeutics’ Elzonris was approved for a rare cancer in Europe in January, following a long and arduous two-year journey through the EU regulatory process that included an initial rejection and a subsequent re-examination by the EMA. Its fortunes were very different in the US, where the review took just six months from filing to approval.

US FDA has not deviated from its bedrock trust in the value of ‘statistically reliable’ endpoints amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the Pink Sheet’s Drug Review Profile of Gilead’s Veklury shows.

Just five and half years elapsed between Gilead’s first remdesivir IND for Ebola virus and Veklury’s US FDA approval for COVID-19.

Not everyone reviewing Daiichi Sankyo’s EU marketing application for Turalio agreed that the potential tenosynovial giant cell tumor treatment shouldn't be approved.

Agency approved Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail Inmazeb and Ridgeback’s mAB Ebanga on data from a multi-arm, adaptive trial in which several investigational agents were independently compared to a control group. Efficacy for both drugs was demonstrated on a mortality endpoint, with lingering uncertainties to be addressed through postmarketing studies.

Sponsor preferred a tropical disease voucher because it could be redeemed for a supplemental application, but the FDA awarded a voucher under the medical countermeasures program, which prohibits redemption for supplements; agency says it takes a case-by-case approach to deciding whether tropical disease and rare pediatric disease vouchers can be redeemed for supplements.

The individual contribution of the three mABs in Regeneron’s Ebola treatment could not be clinically tested due to the highly lethal nature of the disease and the potential for development of resistance; instead, the FDA accepted nonclinical data demonstrating the mechanism of action for each component.