UAE is second country to approve new lung cancer drug

Dubai: The UAE has become the second country in the world to approve the use of ‘Lumakras’, a lung cancer drug manufactured by Amgen Inc, a US multinational biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California.

The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has recently approved the registration and use of Lumakras (sotorasib: AMG 510), following the approval of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use it as the first treatment for adult patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). “The move will give lung cancer patients in the UAE early access to this innovative drug in order to help speed up their treatment plan and improve the quality of their life,” according to MoHAP.

Lumakras is supplied as film-coated tablets for oral use containing 120 mg of sotorasib. The drug is prescribed to adult patients with KRAS G12C-mutated locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), who have received at least one previous cancer therapy.

The medicine registration comes in the wake of the application of MoHAP’s innovative mechanism for its accelerators to evaluate and approve the world’s breakthrough drugs in accordance with the Fast Track/Accelerate Process system.