FDA approves Talzenna for specific breast cancer

The US Food and Drug Administration approved Talzenna (talazoparib), a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, for patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA-mutated (gBRCAm), HER2‑negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

Patients must be selected for therapy based on an FDA-approved companion diagnostic for talazoparib, which will be marketed by US pharma giant Pfizer (NYSE: PFE).

The approval was based on EMBRACA (NCT01945775), an open‑label trial randomizing 431 patients (2:1) with gBRCAm HER2‑negative locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer to receive talazoparib (1mg) or physician’s choice of chemotherapy (capecitabine, eribulin, gemcitabine, or vinorelbine). All patients were required to have a known deleterious or suspected deleterious gBRCA mutation and must have received no more than 3 prior cytotoxic chemotherapy regimens for locally advanced or metastatic disease. Patients were required to have received treatment with an anthracycline and/or a taxane (unless contraindicated) in the neoadjuvant, adjuvant, and/or metastatic treatment setting.