Aveo announces positive test results for kidney cancer drug
AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc., based in Cambridge, and Astellas Pharma Inc., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, today announced that the drug tivozanib demonstrated superiority in a clinical trial on 517 patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.
Based on the new data, AVEO and Astellas currently plan to submit for marketing approval of tivozanib in the United States and Europe in 2012, subject to final collection and analyses of all available data from the trial.
Renal Cell Carcinoma, or kidney cancer, is the ninth most commonly diagnosed cancer in men and women in the U.S. Worldwide it is estimated that more than 250,000 people are diagnosed and more than 100,000 people die from the disease each year. RCC accounts for 90 percent of all malignant kidney tumors.
In February 2011, AVEO and Astellas entered into a worldwide agreement outside of Asia to develop and commercialize tivozanib for the treatment of a broad range of cancers.
D.C. Denison can be reached at denison@globe.com.
