GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has completed its $5.1-billion acquisition of Tesaro, an oncology-focused company based in Waltham, Massachusetts. The deal was announced in December 2018.

Tesaro is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, with a marketed product, Zejula (niraparib), an oral poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, which is approved for use in ovarian cancer. Zejula is approved in the US and Europe as a treatment for adult patients with recurrent ovarian cancer who are in response to platinum-based chemotherapy, regardless of BRCA mutation or biomarker status.

Clinical trials to assess the use of Zejula in “all-comers” patient populations, as a monotherapy and in combinations, for the larger use of first-line maintenance treatment of ovarian cancer are underway. These ongoing trials are evaluating the potential benefit of Zejula in patients who carry gBRCA mutations as well as the larger population of patients without gBRCA mutations whose tumors are HRD-positive and HRD-negative. Results from the first of these studies are expected to be available in the second half of 2019.

GSK says it believes that PARP inhibitors offer “significant opportunities” for use in the treatment of multiple cancer types. In addition to ovarian cancer, Zejula is being investigated for use as a possible treatment in lung, breast and prostate cancer, both as a monotherapy and in combination with other medicines, including with Tesaro’s own anti-PD-1 antibody, dostarlimab.

In addition to Zejula and dostarlimab, Tesaro has several oncology assets in its pipeline, including antibodies directed against TIM-3 and LAG-3 targets.

Source: GlaxoSmithKline