This Approved Cancer Drug Just RECALLED Here's What You Missed

A cancer drug was pulled worldwide. Here’s what happened and what patients should watch for.

👉 Get your free guide, '10 Things to Elevate Your Chemo Journey'

👉 Want personalized attention to help you along your individual cancer journey? Explore 1:1 sessions with Dr. Chaplin

👉 Want to find out more about Dr. Chaplin's journey of bringing a cancer drug to market? Explore his innovations

--------------------------------------------
Episode Description:

Not all cancer news is positive.

Sometimes an important update in oncology is actually bad news—but patients still need to hear it quickly.

A drug called Tazverik (tazemetostat) has just been withdrawn worldwide after new clinical trial data showed an increased risk of secondary blood cancers.

In our latest breakdown, Dr. Chaplin explains:

• What Tazverik was designed to treat
• How epigenetic cancer drugs like this work
• Why leukemia and lymphoma risks triggered the recall
• And what patients who previously took the drug should monitor now

This is also a good example of how safety monitoring continues after a drug reaches the market.

--------------------------------------------

Inquiries: 

info@elevatingcancertreatment.com

https://elevatingcancertreatment.com

--------------------------------------------

Disclaimer:
The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only, and does not constitute medical advice. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard or read in this podcast or on this channel.
Reliance on any information provided by Dr. Jay Chaplin or Elevating Cancer Treatment is solely at your own risk. Dr. Jay Chaplin is a scientist and drug developer, not a medical doctor providing patient care. The content presented here reflects general scientific understanding and research, and may not be applicable to your individual health circumstances. Individual medical conditions and treatments vary, and no two situations are exactly alike.
Always consult with your personal healthcare provider before making any decisions about your health or treatment plan.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Not all news in the world of cancer treatment and drug development is good news or even promising news. Sometimes it's actually bad news. And in those cases, it's still really important to get the information out there very, very broadly and very, very quickly. You'll see why. So, the bad news of the day, and the day that we're talking about was just a couple of days ago. It was March 9th, 2026. The company Ipsin from France, which makes TASVIRIC or TAZMETAST, is withdrawing that drug worldwide. It's being taken completely off the market. And you should know why. You should know what it was for, you should know what to do following up with that, even if this drug wasn't for you, because you may know someone who is treated with it, and you should also understand the class of the drug and why this kind of issue is something that maybe we should have been expecting just a little bit more. Hello and welcome to Elevating Cancer Treatment, where we explain the science and debunk myths to help you navigate your health journey. My background is a little different. Beyond educating about cancer, I'm actually designing new drugs that are defining the future of oncology. This direct hands-on experience offers me a very different perspective of how these cancer treatments work on the body, interact with the cancer cells, and cause side effects. And these are insights that I'm excited to share with you. If that sounds interesting, make sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and hit that notification bell so you never miss an update. And please share it if you find it useful. I'm Dr. Jay Chaplin. An important reminder, I'm a PhD, not an MD. The information in this video is education and it's not medical advice. Every cancer is unique and no general information applies to everyone. Please remember that. Always consult with your healthcare provider for guidance on your specific situation. And two quick things. First, as a thank you for being here, I've created a free resource, 10 things to elevate your chemo journey, which you can download from the link below. And second, by signing up, you'll also get updates on that innovative cancer treatment I'm working on. I'm confident it represents a significant advancement in immunotherapy. So please take a moment, download your free guide, and join us in shaping the future of cancer treatment. So again, Gibson out of France is recalling TAZMETAST or TASVRIC. What is this drug? This drug has been used to treat the thelioid sarcoma. So it's a soft tissue cancer, and it has been used to treat this in conditions where the cancer has locally advanced, so it's grown out of the normal compartment where that tissue was supposed to be, or it's become metastatic and it can no longer be surgically removed or resected. So the way this drug works is it inhibited an enzyme called EZH2. EZH2 was a methyl transferase. It put methyl groups on certain genetic elements to shut certain genes off and let other genes be turned on. This is part of the programming of a cell. And so normally that is very, very tightly controlled which portions of DNA are open and permissive and can be read off and expressed and affect how the cell develops and grows. By inhibiting EZH2, in some ways you're just sort of turning off a bunch of switches. You're completely changing what portions of DNA are accessible within the cell and which ones aren't. And you can see how that could lead to significant alterations in the cell. Now, the idea is, again, that in a cancer cell they have very particular requirements, and if you monkey with things enough, you can shut them down. And this did seem to work for epithelioid sarcoma. That kind of thing can also lead to secondary cancers, which is exactly what was seen here. Now, we should talk about secondary cancers. Secondary cancers are a risk with many types of chemotherapy, which this is not, this was a semi-targeted therapy. And it is a risk with epigenetic reprogrammers, of which this is a class. There are a couple others out on the market. Anytime you change DNA, anytime you break strands and it has to be repaired, or anytime you turn regulatory mechanisms on and off, you do have some risk of causing damage and secondary cancers. This is a known thing. And so this was known during the original trials for this drug for epithelioid sarcoma. The incidence was very small, so small that it was hard to actually quantify in the original clinical trials. This was developed by another company and then bought by Ibsen. When Ipson tried to push this drug into another indication, refractory I can't say that word this morning. In this case, refractory follicular lymphoma through the Symphony 1 trial, they were doing a larger trial and they were following it more closely. And they saw, again, the secondary cancer signal. And it was larger than they wanted. And so they are pulling the drug worldwide for all indications, both the previously approved one and the one that they were in trials for. They're shutting it down and taking it off the market completely. So what are these secondary cancers? The particular secondary cancers with Tasveric are all blood and bone marrow cancers. So we're talking about T cell lymphoblastic lymphoma, we're talking about myelodisplastic syndrome, and myelodysplastic syndrome can very easily turn into acute myeloid leukemia. These are particularly concerning because as cancers that show up in the lymph nodes or in the bone marrow, they're not something that you see very early. They don't cause pain, they don't tend to cause overt symptoms. What you tend to see is tiredness, fatigue, shortness of breath, and that can take quite a while to show up. As a result, people often don't find out about it until it's advanced quite a bit. So if you've ever taken Tazveric, or if you know anyone who has, please, please, please, please, please, please. Get regular blood work, look for signs of poorly differentiated or immature white blood cells in circulation, keep track of any potential incidence of these blood and bone cancers and catch them early. Now, I want to take a step back from the particular drug and the particular mechanism and talk a bit about how people view cancer therapies, especially chemotherapy, but cancer therapies in general, and pharmaceutical companies. If you spend any significant amount of time online, you will see people just absolutely convinced and pushing the perspective that pharma companies are evil, these drugs cause cancer, they're worse than the diseases that they treat, and they're just pushing them on the market to make money, grab cash, hand over fist. If that were the case, would Ibsen be doing this? This is an example of what happens in the industry. When something is seen to be a problem, a real problem, when there's data showing that an issue occurs, drugs either have black box warnings put on them or they're removed from the market. Again, many types of chemotherapy, damaged DNA, and many types of epigenetic reprogrammers can drastically change the way a cell reads its DNA. We know that these kinds of drugs have a chance of causing secondary cancers. The chance is normally very, very small. This is what's normally done in post-approval evaluation, or what we would call phase four. This isn't actually a case of it because it was found in a new registrational trial, but this is what happens through phase four. Most people don't know about phase four. So phase one is your classic safety trial. Tends to be fairly small, and it's often done with healthy volunteers or sometimes actual patients. You're looking for are there any really big bad safety issues? If that's clear, then you move on to phase two, where dosing is established. So dosing is incredibly important. We talk about that a lot on the channel. Once that dosing is sorted out, then you move into phase three, which is showing real-world efficacy. You give it to people at the dose that works best and you see whether it changes outcomes or not. And based on that, the drug is put on the market. But after it's on the market, it continues to be evaluated in what we call phase four or post-approval evaluation. Those are cases where the drug is followed in real life. How is it working? How is it working outside of the clinic? How is it working when you have the complications of regular life? How is it working with interactions with other drugs, things that patients aren't telling their doctors about? Does that change the profile? Does it change the safety? And if safety issues come up, then drugs either get, again, those black box warnings or they're taken off the market. So again, this idea that pharma companies are putting poison on the market to make you sick and take your money is directly falsified by what's happening right now. This company, instead of making millions of dollars, is taking the drug off the market, not because it causes a lot of secondary cancers, but because the rate of secondary cancers is a little higher than what they're comfortable with. This is a very conservative move. And if you follow pharmaceutical companies, you'll find that most of them, there are a few exceptions, most of them are incredibly conservative organizations. They would much rather not make money than have any sort of legal liability. This is an example of that. So today we mentioned a number of things. If you haven't already seen the episodes about the Big Pharma Greed idea, please go see that. That's an excellent episode. Or this is a bit less relevant to finding repurposed drugs, but there was a discussion in the repurposed drugs episode about the way drugs are developed and about the way that clinical trials are done and pharmaceutical company motivations. Those are excellent ones to follow up with here. And again, please, if you or anyone you know has ever taken Tasveric, please, please, please follow up closely, talk to your oncologist about this. Hopefully they will talk to you proactively. But if not, know that you need to be looking for signs of leukemia and lymphoma. The chances are still very low, but they're significant. So please monitor that. And if it's going to happen, catch it early, treat it early. That's your best bet. Thank you. Beyond these videos, if you need more personalized guidance or a deeper dive into specific treatments to have your treatment be as effective as possible, I offer one on one sessions and medical advocacy. You can find information on our website, which is linked down below. Again, if you found this video informative, please give it a thumbs up, click the notification bell, and subscribe to our channel for more science based cancer insights.