AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo’s Datroway (datopotamab deruxtecan or Dato-DXd) has been approved by the FDA in the U.S. for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative (IHC 0, IHC 1+ or IHC 2+/ISH-) breast cancer who have received prior endocrine-based therapy and chemotherapy for unresectable or metastatic disease.

Datroway is a specifically engineered TROP2-directed antibody drug conjugate (ADC) discovered by Daiichi Sankyo and being jointly developed and commercialized by AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo. The approval was based on results from the TROPION-Breast01 Phase III trial.

Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, Program Director of Breast Oncology and Director of Translational Research Integration at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and Global Principal Investigator for TROPION-Breast01, said: “Despite considerable progress in the HR-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer treatment landscape, new therapies are still needed to tackle the frequent and complex challenge of disease progression after endocrine and initial chemotherapy. The approval of datopotamab deruxtecan, a novel TROP2-directed antibody drug conjugate, marks a major therapeutic milestone and provides patients with metastatic breast cancer a new treatment alternative to conventional chemotherapy.”

Dave Fredrickson, EVP, Oncology Haematology Business Unit, AstraZeneca, said: “With this first approval of Datroway in the U.S., we continue to deliver on our ambition for antibody drug conjugates to improve upon and replace conventional chemotherapy for the treatment of multiple cancers. We are proud to bring Datroway to people living with metastatic HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, and this approval marks the eighth new medicine of the 20 we have set out to deliver across AstraZeneca by 2030.”

Ken Keller, Global Head of Oncology Business, and President and CEO, Daiichi Sankyo, Inc., added: “The approval of Datroway provides patients with HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer previously treated with endocrine-based therapy and traditional chemotherapy with the opportunity to be treated with a new TROP2-directed antibody drug conjugate earlier in the metastatic setting. Datroway is the latest addition to our portfolio of innovative cancer treatments and marks the fourth medicine from our oncology pipeline to receive approval in the U.S.”

Additional regulatory submissions for Datroway in breast cancer are under review in the EU, China and other regions.