Tempest Therapeutics, Inc. announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) to amezalpat (TPST-1120), an oral, small molecule, selective PPAR⍺ antagonist for the treatment of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
“Receiving orphan drug designation for amezalpat to treat HCC underscores the critical need for new treatment options for patients suffering from this historically hard to treat disease,” said Sam Whiting, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer and head of R&D of Tempest. “Tempest is dedicated to developing groundbreaking cancer treatments that will improve patients’ lives, and with broad agreement in hand from both the FDA and EMA, the team continues to prepare for a pivotal phase 3 study for amezalpat in first-line HCC patients.”
This important regulatory designation follows positive data across multiple key study efficacy and safety endpoints in a global randomized Phase 1b/2 clinical study evaluating amezalpat plus standard-of-care atezolizumab and bevacizumab versus atezolizumab and bevacizumab alone in the first-line treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic HCC. Notable positive outcomes of the randomized comparison include a six-month improvement in median overall survival (OS) with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.65 for patients receiving the amezalpat combination therapy and an objective response rate (ORR) of 30% vs 13% favoring the amezalpat arm. In addition, survival benefit from the addition of amezalpat was preserved in key sub-populations including PD-L1 negative disease and b-catenin mutated disease, which is consistent with amezalpat’s proposed mechanism of action to target both the tumor cells directly and the patient’s immune system.