(Reuters) – Private drug developer Servier Group said on Sunday that its experimental brain cancer treatment had dramatically slowed the progression of a type of brain tumor, a positive in a field that has seen no progress For more than 20 years.
The drug, vorasidenib, delayed grade 2 glioma growth for a median of 27.7 months, more than twice compared to 11.1 months for patients who received placebo.
Grade 2 gliomas are progressive malignant brain tumors, which are more common in adults, but can also occur in children and adolescents.
The study, involving 331 patients who had not undergone any previous treatment other than surgery, showed that vorasidenib significantly improved progression-free survival and delayed the time before moving on to other cancer interventions like chemotherapy and radiation therapy, according to results that were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Vorasidenib was granted accelerated designation by the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in March 2023 and the company is currently working on timelines for submitting a New Drug Application (NDA) for vorasidenib to the FDA.
The drug was part of France-headquartered Servier’s acquisition of the cancer business of Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc for around $2 billion in 2020.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru, editing by Angus MacSwan)