17 August 2015 - Seattle Genetics, Inc. announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Adcetris (brentuximab vedotin) for the treatment of patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) at high risk of relapse or progression as post-autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (auto-HSCT) consolidation. The approval is based on a phase 3 clinical trial called AETHERA that was designed to compare up to 16 cycles (approximately one year) of Adcetris therapy administered every three weeks following auto-HSCT to placebo. The primary endpoint was met with a significant improvement in median progression-free survival (PFS) of 42.9 months (95% CI: 30.4, 42.9) for patients who received Adcetris versus 24.1 months (95% CI: 11.5, not estimable) for patients who received placebo, an improvement of 18.8 months (hazard ratio=0.57 [95% CI: 0.40, 0.81]; p-value=0.001). In addition, data from the AETHERA trial converted the U.S. accelerated approval of the relapsed classical HL indication to regular approval. Adcetris is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) directed to CD30, which is expressed in classical HL and systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma (sALCL), as well as other lymphoma subtypes.

This is the third indication for Adcetris, which was granted accelerated FDA approval in August 2011 for two other indications: (1) treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma patients who fail autologous transplant or who fail at least two prior multi-agent chemotherapy regimens and are not autologous transplant candidates, and (2) treatment of systemic ALCL patients who fail at least one prior multi-agent chemotherapy regimen. The sALCL indication is approved under accelerated approval based on overall response rate. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

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