EGFR

By Ben Butkus
Life Technologies this week announced the expansion of its TaqMan Mutation Detection Assays based on competitive allele-specific TaqMan, or Cast, PCR technology.

Qiagen Expands Companion Diagnostic Portfolio
Qiagen has received approval of its Therascreen EGFR Mutation Detection Kit RGQ from Japanese regulatory authorities.

This article was originally posted on Sept. 1.
Roche last week said that the European Commission has approved the use of Tarceva as a first-line monotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer in patients with EGFR activating mutations.

Continuing to expand the development program for its irreversible inhibitor of EGFR and HER2, afatinib, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals has launched two new Phase II studies — one investigating the drug as a treatment for inflammatory breast cancer and another for metastatic

Following a positive recommendation from the EMA committee, the European Commission is expected to issue a decision in September regarding marketing Tarceva as a first-line treatment for EGFR-mutation-positive NSCLC.

Roche and Clovis Oncology to develop PCR-based companion IVD for EGFR mutations; Medco Health to offer MolecularMD's qRT-PCR test for BCR-ABL.

"With genomics, and pharmacogenomics, and all the other aspects of the cancers, we have to think of a different way than the randomized trial," said Patrick Loehrer, interim director of Indiana University's cancer center and a member of FDA's Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee.

Although the decision to withdraw its accelerated approval NDA doesn't preclude the company from filing an entirely new NDA for Iressa in NSCLC patients with EGFR mutations, as it has done in several European countries, AstraZeneca has decided not to try to relaunch Iressa with a PGx strategy in the US.

In the study, out of three patients with ALK gene rearrangements, two responded partially to Infinity's investigational drug IPI-504, and one experienced prolonged stable disease while on the treatment for 7.2 months and had a 24 percent reduction in tumor size.