The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted tentative approval for Veloxis Pharmaceuticals' Envarsus XR. FDA informed the company that the final approval of Envarsus XR will be delayed until expiration of the exclusivity period for Astellas' Astagraf XL. Veloxis understands that this expiry is anticipated to occur July 19, 2016. FDA's approval notice stated that it is "subject to change on the basis of any new information that may come to FDA's attention."
Veloxis disagrees that exclusivity for Astagraf XL, which was not identified as a listed drug or relied upon to support approval of Envarsus XR, should require delay in the formal approval of Envarsus XR. Veloxis plans to immediately appeal this decision within FDA, and will pursue all options available to it.
The tentative approval notification received from FDA included agreement with manufacturing post-marketing commitments as previously proposed by Veloxis during NDA review as well as agreement on final labelling for the product. There were no other conditions attached to the NDA approval.