OREANDA-NEWS. Roche announced today that the European Commission (EC) has approved the subcutaneous (SC) formulation of MabThera® (rituximab) for people with previously untreated and relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). The approved dose for CLL is 1600mg. Following the approval of MabThera SC (1400 mg) for common forms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in March 2014, this is the second European approval for the formulation.

“MabThera SC provides patients with significantly faster treatment administration and the opportunity to enjoy more time outside the clinical setting compared to intravenous delivery of the medicine,” said Sandra Horning, M.D., Chief Medical Officer and Head, Global Product Development. “Today’s approval in CLL means the benefit of MabThera SC can be offered to even more patients.”

The European approval was based primarily on data from the phase Ib SAWYER study, in which previously untreated CLL patients received either MabThera SC (1600 mg) or intravenous MabThera (500mg/m2) in combination with chemotherapy (fludarabine and cyclophosphamide), a current standard of care. SAWYER demonstrated treatment with MabThera SC resulted in comparable levels of the medicine in the blood (serum concentrations), as well as efficacy and safety, to intravenous MabThera, and results were recently published in The Lancet Haematology1.

MabThera is a therapeutic monoclonal antibody that binds to a particular protein – the CD20 antigen – on the surface of normal and malignant B-cells. It then recruits the body’s natural defences to attack and kill the marked B-cells. Stem cells (B-cell progenitors) in bone marrow lack the CD20 antigen, allowing healthy B-cells to regenerate after treatment and return to normal levels within several months.

MabThera first received FDA approval for the treatment of relapsed indolent non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (NHL) in 1997 and was the first targeted cancer medicine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). MabThera was approved in the EU in June 1998, and has since been used to treat more than 2.7 million people with specific blood cancers. For more than 15 years, the efficacy and safety of MabThera has been documented in more than 300 phase II/III clinical studies. MabThera has been approved for the treatment of several blood cancers, specifically, certain types of NHL and for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). It continues to be studied in other types of blood cancers and disease areas where CD20-positive cells are believed to play a role.

MabThera is known as Rituxan in the United States, Japan and Canada. Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, and Biogen collaborate on Rituxan in the United States, and Roche markets MabThera in the rest of the world, except Japan, where MabThera is co-marketed by Chugai and Zenyaku Kogyo Co. Ltd.