Benzinga | Oct 25, 2021 04:33PM EDT

Geron Says Enters Into New Innovative Licensing And Access Pathway In U.K. For Imetelstat

Geron Corporation (NASDAQ:GERN), a late-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of treatments for hematologic malignancies, today announced that imetelstat, the Company's first in class telomerase inhibitor, has been granted an Innovation Passport, which is the first prescribed entry point to the Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway (ILAP) launched in the United Kingdom (UK) by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in January 2021, post-Brexit. The objective of this new licensing and access pathway is to reduce the time to market for innovative medicines. Key benefits of being within ILAP include a 150-day accelerated assessment and rolling review of a Marketing Authorization Application (MAA), as well as opportunities for frequent interactions with the review staff at the MHRA and its partner agencies, including the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), to discuss imetelstat's development, regulatory plans and reimbursement plans.

"We are pleased to participate in this new expedited review pathway established by MHRA and look forward to working with them and their partner agencies as we collaborate to bring imetelstat to UK patients," said Sharon McBain, Geron's Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs. "We are pleased imetelstat met the three qualifying criteria for the Innovation Passport and believe that because of the durable transfusion independence across different patient subgroups and strong evidence of disease-modifying activity observed in our IMerge Phase 2 study, imetelstat's novel telomerase inhibitor approach has the potential to be an important drug in this patient population."

Patients from the IMerge Phase 2 clinical trial achieved durable transfusion independence with imetelstat treatment, including transfusion-free periods greater than one year, irrespective of the disease subgroup, such as ringed sideroblast positive or ringed sideroblast negative. Such durability provides significant and meaningful clinical benefit to lower risk MDS patients given their chronic anemia and the debilitating impact of serial blood transfusions. In addition, depletion of cytogenetic abnormalities and reductions in key driver mutations associated with lower risk MDS were observed, and these results were also correlated with transfusion independence. Taken together, the durability, molecular and cytogenetic data from IMerge Phase 2 provide strong evidence for disease-modifying activity of imetelstat which has the potential to differentiate it from other currently approved and investigational treatments in lower risk MDS today.

Imetelstat is currently being studied in two Phase 3 clinical trials, IMerge Phase 3 in lower risk MDS and IMpactMF in refractory myelofibrosis. Based upon current planning assumptions, Geron expects top-line results for the IMerge Phase 3 clinical trial to be available at the beginning of January 2023.