Cell Therapeutics suffered an embarrassing defeat the last time it appeared in front of an FDA advisory panel and today the company made a move that will enable it to avoid another public shellacking, at least for a while.
The Seattle-based biotech company (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CTIC]]) said today it has withdrawn its application to start selling pixantrone (Pixuvri) as a new lymphoma drug in the U.S. after saying today it needed more time to prepare for a Feb. 9 meeting of the FDA’s cancer drug advisory panel. The company said it asked the FDA to allow it to present at the March meeting instead, but when the agency said no, Cell Therapeutics withdrew the application. That means the agency’s April 24 deadline to complete its review of the application has been voided, although Cell Therapeutics said today it plans to resubmit its application later in 2012.
The last time Cell Therapeutics appeared at the FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC), in March 2010, the panel voted 9 to 0 against the company’s pixantrone application. The chair of the FDA panel at the time, Gail Eckhardt of the University of Colorado at Denver, said the Cell Therapeutics application was “disturbing,” partly because it only enrolled 140 of the 320 patients needed to generate a statistically valid result. The head of the FDA’s cancer drug office, Richard Pazdur, said at the time that the Cell Therapeutics application depended on “a single incomplete trial.” The initial application was turned down by the FDA in April 2010.
By withdrawing the application just before the next advisory panel, Cell Therapeutics contradicted one of its own statements from less than a month ago, when it said it believed it had addressed the concerns raised by the FDA.
“We are pleased the Office of Oncology Drug Products (OODP) chose to bring our pixantrone new drug application back to ODAC for review now that we have provided additional information and data recommended by the Office of New Drugs (OND) that we believe addresses the issues raised in the OODP Complete Response Letter of April 2010,” James Bianco, the company’s CEO, said in a Jan. 3 statement.
Shares of Cell Therapeutics fell 18 percent today to $1.09 in early trading.
