Added approval from FDA for Tagrisso

There was good and bad news from the US regulator on Friday for UK pharma major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN).

The US Food and Drug Administration approved the company’s Tagrisso (osimertinib) as the first adjuvant treatment for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have a specific type of genetic mutation.

"Today’s approval of Tagrisso demonstrates how additional research on therapies approved in later stages of cancer can eventually improve treatment options for patients in earlier stages,” said Dr Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence and acting director of the Office of Oncologic Diseases in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “With this approval, patients may be treated with this targeted therapy in an earlier and potentially more curative stage of non-small cell lung cancer,” he noted.