Jazz Pharmaceuticals and MD Anderson Announce five-year collaboration to evaluate zanidatamab in HER2-expressing cancers.

The collaboration will combine MD Anderson's translational medicine and clinical research expertise with Jazz's expanding oncology drug development capabilities to investigate the potential of zanidatamab as monotherapy and in combination with other treatments for patients with different tumor types and stages. This includes its possible applicability in early-stage breast cancer, treatment areas where other HER2-directed therapies have failed, cancers with varying degrees of HER2-expression, and potentially rare, tissue-agnostic cancers.

MD Anderson has been instrumental in researching breakthrough cancer therapies and was a key contributor to early investigations exploring the use of zanidatamab against an actionable target in the treatment of multiple tumor types and the subsequent Phase II HERIZON-BTC-01 trial, which evaluated zanidatamab for patients with treatment-refractory HER2-amplified biliary tract cancers ( see separate entry). Results presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting demonstrated durable responses and a confirmed objective response rate of 41%. The presentation was selected for the 2023 Best of ASCO program.

Jazz and MD Anderson will establish a joint steering committee to oversee the collaboration, which will fund multiple studies over its five-year term. Research under the collaboration is expected to begin in late 2023 or early 2024. This effort builds upon a previous strategic collaboration between Jazz and MD Anderson focused on hematologic malignancies.