STA to supply intermediate for Tesaro 's $117k-a-year cancer drug Zejula

24-Jul-2017 - Last updated on 25-Jul-2017 at 13:15 GMT

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Tesaro Inc has hired STA Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd to supply intermediates for its recently approved, $117k-a-year, ovarian cancer drug Zejula (niraparib).

The deal will see Shanghai, China based STA supply Tesrao for a five-year period. A spokesman for STA told us the firm will supply "Tesaro’s global market for the drug."

The Shanghai based contractor – which is a subsidiary of WuXi AppTec – supplied the intermediates used to make supplies of the drug for late-phase clinical trials.

Zejula was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in March for the treatment of epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube or primary peritoneal cancer.

In May, Tesaro reported that 500 Zejula prescriptions had been written, with a year’s worth of the drug costing $117,000 (€100,368).

The firm filed the drug in Europe last October.

Ongoing development

Tesaro is also developing Zejula for other cancer indications in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson (J&J) unit Janssen Biotech, Inc.

Last month Tesaro said the firms had halted enrolment in a Phase II trial – called Galahad - of the drug in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and DNA-repair anomalies.

In a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on June 12, Tesaro said: “The trial is not on a clinical hold, and this temporary enrollment hold is not due to any safety concerns.

“Since the study enrolled very rapidly, there is a temporary hold on enrollment so Janssen can assess the enrolled patients against the protocol criteria. This will ensure the appropriate balance of patient types are included in the intended study.”