Takeda's Alun­brig wins lung can­cer ap­proval; Atara of­fers an­oth­er pos­i­tive MS drug up­date

→ Take­da’s ty­ro­sine ki­nase in­hibitor briga­tinib (brand­ed Alun­brig) — a drug the Japan­ese drug­mak­er ac­quired with its $5.2 bil­lion Ari­ad buy­out — has se­cured ap­proval for a sub­set of lung can­cer pa­tients. Last No­vem­ber, the com­pa­ny put out late-stage da­ta com­par­ing briga­tinib against crizo­tinib in 275 ad­vanced non-small-cell-lung-can­cer pa­tients who test­ed pos­i­tive for the ALK gene. Da­ta showed the Take­da drug helped pa­tients by a me­di­an 24 months with­out their can­cer spread­ing, hit­ting the pri­ma­ry end­point, ver­sus 11 months in the crizo­tinib group. The on­ly prob­lem? Crizo­tinib, the con­trol in the tri­al, was the first-ever ALK in­hibitor ap­proved, but since then, com­pa­nies like Pfiz­er, No­var­tis and Roche have all come up with their own.

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