20 March 2018 - - Cambridge, England-based pharmaceutical company Astex Pharmaceuticals' pharmaceutical collaborator, Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V., has been granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation by the US FDA for erdafitinib in the treatment of metastatic urothelial cancer, the company said.
Erdafitinib was discovered by Astex and Janssen as part of a 2008 exclusive worldwide collaboration and licence agreement to identify novel, small molecule inhibitors of Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor (FGFR) kinase, including for the treatment of cancer.
Janssen is responsible for the clinical development and commercialisation of all products arising from this collaboration.
The FGFR inhibitor programme between Astex and Janssen underlines the UK strengths in academic-biotech collaboration as it originated from pioneering work on FGFR between Astex and the Cancer Research UK Drug Discovery Group at the Newcastle Cancer Centre, Northern Institute for Cancer Research, Newcastle University, UK.
Astex is developing a proprietary pipeline of novel therapies and has a number of partnered products being developed under collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. In October 2013 Astex became a wholly owned subsidiary of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan.
Otsuka researches, develops, manufactures and markets innovative and original products, with a focus on pharmaceutical products for the treatment of diseases and nutraceutical products for the maintenance of everyday health.