Seattle Genetics announced that the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products (Swissmedic) has granted approval for TUKYSA (tucatinib) tablets in combination with trastuzumab and capecitabine, for the treatment of patients with metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer, who have previously received two or more anti-HER2 regimens in any setting, including trastuzumab, pertuzumab and trastuzumab-emtansine (T–DM1).

The application for TUKYSA approval was reviewed by Swissmedic as part of Project Orbis, an initiative of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence that provides a framework for concurrent submission and review of oncology drugs among participating international regulatory agencies in Canada, Australia and Singapore. On April 17, the FDA approved TUKYSA in the U.S. under the FDA’s Real-Time Oncology Review (RTOR) pilot program, four months prior to its action date, and represented the first new drug approved under Project Orbis.

“We’re grateful to Swissmedic for their collaboration through FDA’s Project Orbis in approving this important new medicine in Switzerland,” said Jennifer Stephens, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at Seattle Genetics. “We’re committed to bringing new targeted therapies to patients, and we are excited about this important first step toward making TUKYSA available to patients in Switzerland.”

TUKYSA is an oral, small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of HER2, a protein that contributes to cancer cell growth.

The approval is based on results from the pivotal trial HER2CLIMB, a randomized (2:1), double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that enrolled 612 patients with HER2-positive unresectable locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who had previously received, either separately or in combination, trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1). The study results were published in The New England Journal of Medicine in December 2019.