Saturday, February 15, 2020
Epizyme, Inc., a fully integrated commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel epigenetic therapies, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for filing the company’s New Drug Application (NDA) for the accelerated approval of TAZVERIK™ (tazemetostat) for patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma (FL) who have received at least two prior lines of systemic therapy. The FDA granted Priority Review and has designated the company’s application as a supplemental NDA (sNDA) with a Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) target action date of June 18, 2020. Priority Review is granted to investigational therapies that, if approved, may offer significant improvements in the treatment, prevention or diagnosis of a serious condition.
“Follicular lymphoma is an incurable disease for which patients are in need of a safe, durable treatment option,” said Dr. Shefali Agarwal, chief medical officer of Epizyme. “If approved, we believe TAZVERIK could become an important new option for these patients and their physicians. We are thrilled with FDA’s acceptance of our application as an sNDA with Priority Review, for TAZVERIK for patients with relapsed or refractory FL. We look forward to working with the Agency during their review and would like to thank the many patients, caregivers and physicians whose contributions have been invaluable in bringing us to this point.”
“On the heels of our first approval for TAZVERIK for epithelioid sarcoma last month and a successful launch into the market, this sNDA filing acceptance brings us one step closer to providing TAZVERIK to a larger patient population,” said Robert Bazemore, chief executive officer of Epizyme. “The June 2020 PDUFA date positions TAZVERIK for two FDA approvals within six months of each other, which would be a remarkable achievement for Epizyme. We are actively building off our experience with our ES commercial launch, in order to seamlessly expand to an FL launch where we anticipate rapid market adoption, if approved.”
Epizyme’s sNDA submission is based primarily on updated Phase 2 efficacy and safety data for TAZVERIK in this patient population, which were presented at the 2019 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. The data demonstrated that treatment with TAZVERIK resulted in clinical benefit as assessed by both investigators and an Independent Review Committee (IRC), and was shown to be generally well tolerated in FL patients with EZH2 activating mutations (n=45) and FL patients with wild-type EZH2 (n=54).
To support a full approval of TAZVERIK for FL, Epizyme is conducting a single, global, randomized, adaptive trial to evaluate the combination of TAZVERIK with “R2” (Revlimid® plus Rituxan®), an approved chemo-free treatment regimen, for FL patients in the second-line or later treatment setting. The trial is expected to enroll approximately 500 FL patients, stratified based on their EZH2 mutation status. The safety run-in portion of the trial is underway, and the company expects to advance into the efficacy portion of the Phase 1b/3 trial in 2020.