NMPA regulatory agency for China granted conditional approval for toripalimab to treat recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma.- Shanghai Junishi Biosciences

Shanghai Junshi Biosciences announced that the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) of China has granted a conditional approval to toripalimab for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) after failure of at least two lines of prior systemic therapy. This is the first approval of immune checkpoint blockade therapy in NPC in the world and the second approved indication for toripalimab in China. In December 2018, Toripalimab obtained a conditional approval from the NMPA for the second-line treatment of unresectable or metastatic melanoma. The supplemental NDA is based on the POLARIS-02 study (NCT02915432), which is a multi-center, open-label, Phase II pivotal registrational clinical study led by Professor Ruihua Xu from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. The study enrolled a total of 190 patients with recurrent or metastatic NPC after failure of prior systemic therapy. The POLARIS-02 study is the world’s largest clinical study for any immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy for the treatment of recurrent or metastatic NPC. In January 2021, the results of the POLARIS-02 study were published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results of the POLARIS-02 study showed that Toripalimab demonstrated durable anti-tumor activity and survival benefits regardless of PD-L1 expression status with a manageable safety profile. In 92 patients with recurrent/metastatic NPC after failure of at least two lines of prior systemic chemotherapy, the objective response rate (ORR) was 23.9%; the median duration of response (mDOR) 14.9 months; and the median overall survival (mOS) 15.1 months. See- " Efficacy, Safety, and Correlative Biomarkers of Toripalimab in Previously Treated Recurrent or Metastatic Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma: A Phase II Clinical Trial (POLARIS-02)".-Feng-Hua Wang, Xiao-Li Wei., et al.,10.1200/JCO.20.02712 Journal of Clinical Oncology. Published online January 25, 2021. PMID: 33492986.