On December 3, 2024 PharmaMar Group (MSE: PHM) reported that its licensing partner, Luye Pharma Group Ltd. has received conditional marketing approval for Zepzelca (lurbinectedin) from the China National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for the treatment of adult patients with metastatic Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) with disease progression during or after platinum-based chemotherapy (Press release, PharmaMar, DEC 3, 2024, View Source [SID1234648757]). China’s NMPA grants conditional approvals to medicines targeting diseases that are severely life-threatening and where there is no effective treatment.
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The NMPA conditional approval is based on the results from a single-arm, dose-escalation, dose-expansion clinical study conducted in China. The study was designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and preliminary efficacy of lurbinectedin in Chinese patients with advanced solid tumors, including recurrent SCLC. This study confirms the efficacy and safety of lurbinectedin in Chinese patients following the basket trial data that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to grant accelerated approval of lurbinectedin in USA; an open-label, multicenter, single-arm, monotherapy study in 105 adult patients with recurrent metastatic SCLC (including patients with platinum-sensitive and platinum-resistant disease).
The most recent data from 2022 indicates that Lung Cancer is the tumor with the highest incidence in China, with more than 1,000,000 new cases per year, and was the leading cause of cancer deaths with 733,291i. Specifically, globally, Small Cell Lung Cancer accounts for 10-15% of lung cancer diagnoses and is one of most aggressive forms of lung cancerii.
In addition to this approval of lurbinectedin in mainland China, it is already approved in Chinese territory in Hong Kong and Macau and totalling 17 regions around the world. In April 2019, PharmaMar and Luye Pharma signed an agreement for the development and commercialization of lurbinectedin in Small Cell Lung Cancer and potentially other indications in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau.