AstraZeneca and MSD have announced that Lynparza (olaparib) has been approved in the US for the maintenance treatment of adult patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious germline BRCA-mutated (gBRCAm) metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma (pancreatic cancer) whose disease has not progressed on at least 16 weeks of a 1st-line platinum-based chemotherapy regimen. Patients will be selected for therapy based on an FDA-approved companion diagnostic for Lynparza.

The approval follows the recommendation from the US FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) on 17 December for Lynparza in this indication, and was based on results from the pivotal Phase III POLO trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.

Results showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in progression-free survival, where Lynparza nearly doubled the time patients with gBRCAm metastatic pancreatic cancer lived without disease progression or death to a median of 7.4 months vs. 3.8 months on placebo. The safety and tolerability profile of Lynparza in the POLO trial was in line with that observed in prior clinical trials.

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) is a US-based organisation that supports and advocates on behalf of the patients, caregivers and communities affected by pancreatic cancer.