Jazz Pharma’s combination therapy for lung cancer gets US approval

(Reuters) -The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Jazz Pharmaceuticals’ combination therapy as a maintenance treatment for adult patients with a type of lung cancer, the regulator said on Thursday.

Shares of the drugmaker were up 1.6% at $139.30 in extended trade.

The drug, Zepzelca, in combination with Roche’s Tecentriq, is approved for patients with extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, whose disease has not progressed after initial chemotherapy.

This is an aggressive form of lung cancer that may spread to other parts of the body including the bone marrow.

Zepzelca is already approved as a second-line treatment — given when the initial treatment fails — for the illness.

The approval is based on late-stage trial data showing a 46% reduction in disease progression and a 27% reduction in death risk compared with Tecentriq alone.

The recommended dosing regimen includes Zepzelca given every three weeks by intravenous infusion, and Tecentriq injected either intravenously every two to four weeks or subcutaneously every three weeks, depending on the formulation, the FDA said.

Roche’s Tecentriq is an immunotherapy widely used across multiple cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer.

In May last year, Amgen’s targeted immunotherapy, Imdelltra, was approved as a second-line treatment for patients whose disease has progressed after platinum-based chemotherapy.

(Reporting by Siddhi Mahatole in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)