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Nexavar® approved in Japan

The cancer drug Nexavar® is on track to become a standard therapy for several types of cancer. The picture shows Bayer HealthCare employees Dirk Unterberg (left) and Ömür Capar carrying out an optical inspection of Nexavar® tablets.

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The cancer drug Nexavar® is on track to become a standard therapy for several types of cancer. The picture shows Bayer HealthCare employees Dirk Unterberg (left) and Ömür Capar carrying out an optical inspection of Nexavar® tablets.

Berlin – Bayer has been granted marketing approval for Nexavar® in Japan for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), the most common form of kidney cancer. Nexavar® is an oral multi-kinase inhibitor, jointly developed by Bayer HealthCare and Onyx Pharmaceuticals, that targets both the tumor cell and the tumor vasculature. In Japan, Nexavar® is the first approved oral targeted therapy for metastatic RCC. Nexavar® is being introduced to the market now that its price has been set by the Japanese health authorities.

The application for marketing approval for Nexavar® to treat liver cancer was filed in September 2007. Japanese authorities have granted the product priority review status for this indication.

Every year, more than 200,000 people around the world are diagnosed with RCC, and more than 100,000 die from this type of cancer. In about one third of patients the cancer has already metastasized by the time it is diagnosed. In Japan, approximately 10,000 people suffer from kidney cancer.

Nexavar® is currently approved in more than 40 countries for liver cancer and in over 70 countries for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer. The drug is also being evaluated by Bayer and Onyx, government agencies, oncological study groups and individual investigators as a single-agent or combination treatment in a wide range of other cancers.