Excellent news in Advanced Prostate Cancer – Medivation's MDV3100 meets primary endpoint
It’s not often that you wake up to really exciting news in the cancer field, but that’s what happened this morning with Medivation’s announcement on the interim analysis of their androgen receptor (AR) antagonist, MDV3100:
“As reported by the IDMC, MDV3100 produced a 4.8-month advantage in median overall survival compared to placebo.
The estimated median survival for men treated with MDV3100 was 18.4 months compared with 13.6 months for men treated with placebo. MDV3100 provided a 37 percent reduction in risk of death compared to placebo (Hazard Ratio=0.631).
The IDMC further determined, considering the observed safety profile, that MDV3100 demonstrated a favorable risk-to-benefit ratio sufficient to stop the study.”
The 4.8 month improvement in OS in post-chemo setting is superior to that previously reported for abiraterone (Zytiga), which had a 3.9 month advantage over placebo and received regulatory approval in the US and EU earlier this year.
This is great news for patients, for Medivation and also for Charles Sawyers at MSKCC who originally invented the MDV3100 compound. If you are interested in the MDV3100 story, you can read my interview with Dr Sawyers posted earlier this year.
There are several points to note about these results:
- MDV3100 does not require concomittant steroid therapy as abiraterone does, this is huge for urologists who as surgeons do not generally want to manage side effects.
- Given the excellent results in the post chemotherapy setting, I would expect the survival advantage in the pre-chemotherapy session for both therapies to be more than 6 months.
- Ultimately, as hormone therapy, I can see the real advantage for MDV3100 being as a more potent and complete inhibitor of the AR than bicalutamide, so there is a huge potential for MDV3100 as ADT therapy in the earlier stages of disease.
With regards to filing, Medivation announced that:
“Medivation and Astellas plan to hold a pre-NDA meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early 2012 and will provide an update on regulatory timelines for MDV3100 subsequent to that meeting.”
At this rate, I would expect to see MDV3100 approved sometime in 2012.
The future is looking very bright indeed for patients with advanced prostate cancer – these new therapies offer the potential with sequencing to extend lives significantly.
2 Responses to “Excellent news in Advanced Prostate Cancer – Medivation's MDV3100 meets primary endpoint”
Though Sawyers deserves huge credit, it’s a bit much to say he “originally invented” the compound. Seems like Mike Jung and the chemists he worked with deserve a lot of the “invention” credit.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2981508/
That’s probably a bit nit picky – I was in a hurry to get this out with other pressing deadlines. Sawyers did indeed work with Jung at UCLA as described in the previous interview with him (linked in the post). Perhaps a better description would have been co-founder, but still.
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