The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Halaven (eribulin mesylate), a type of chemotherapy, for the treatment of liposarcoma (a specific type of soft tissue sarcoma) that cannot be removed by surgery (unresectable) or is advanced (metastatic). This treatment is approved for patients who received prior chemotherapy that contained an anthracycline drug.
“Halaven is the first drug approved for patients with liposarcoma that has demonstrated an improvement in survival time,” said Richard Pazdur, M.D., director of the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “The clinical trial data the FDA reviewed indicates that Halaven increased overall survival by approximately seven months, offering patients a clinically meaningful drug.”