FDA approves Medivation prostate cancer drug

A prostate cancer drug developed by Medivation Inc and Astellas Pharma Inc has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in men whose cancer has spread despite treatment with hormone therapy and chemotherapy, the agency said on Friday.

Approval of the drug, to be sold under the brand name Xtandi, comes three months ahead of the agency’s late-November decision deadline.

Wall Street analysts, on average, have forecast Medivation’s sales of the drug at $1.2 billion by 2017, according to Thomson Pharma.

Xtandi, or enzalutamide, is one of a new class of drugs, known as androgen inhibitors, designed to interfere with the ability of testosterone to bind to prostate cancer cells. Testosterone is the male hormone that fuels prostate cancer cell growth.

Medivation and Astellas reported in November that a pivotal study of the drug had been stopped early after it became clear that it improved median overall survival by 4.8 months compared with a placebo.

“The need for additional treatment options for advanced prostate cancer continues to be important for patients,” Richard Pazdur, director of hematology and oncology products at the FDA’s drug evaluation and research center, said in a statement. “Xtandi is the latest treatment for this disease to demonstrate its ability to extend a patient’s life.”

The FDA last year approved Johnson & Johnson’s Zytiga, which is designed to work inside cancer cells to block testosterone production.

Prostate cancer kills about 250,000 men a year globally and is the second most common cause of cancer death in men in the United States, after lung cancer.

The most common side effects seen with Xtandi were weakness, fatigue and back pain, but the FDA said seizures occurred in about 1 percent of patients and they were taken off the therapy.

Shares of Medivation were halted on Nasdaq after rising $1.36, or 1.4 percent, to $98.78 before the FDA announcement.

Shares of Japan-based Astellas closed down less than a percentage point at 3,820 yen in Tokyo.

(Reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

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(Reuters)