First targeted therapy to treat complication of sickle cell disease
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Adakveo (crizanlizumab-tmca), a treatment to reduce the frequency of vaso-occlusive crisis – a common and painful complication of sickle cell disease that occurs when blood circulation is obstructed by sickled red blood cells – for patients age 16 years and older.
Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder in which the red blood cells are abnormally shaped, which restricts the flow in blood vessels and limits oxygen delivery to the body’s tissues, leading to severe pain and organ damage. It is also characterized by severe chronic inflammation that results in vaso-occlusive crisis where patients experience episodes of extreme pain and organ damage. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sickle cell disease affects approximately 100,000 Americans. The disease occurs most often in African Americans, where 1 out of every 365 babies born have the disease.
The Adakveo approval was based on the results of a randomized clinical trial enrolling 198 patients with sickle cell disease with a history of vaso-occlusive crisis. Patients either received Adakveo or a placebo. The patients treated with Adakveo experienced fewer health care visits for vaso-occlusive crisis annually (median annual rate of 1.63 visits), compared to patients who received a placebo (median annual rate of 2.98 visits). In addition, 36 percent of patients who received Adakveo did not experience vaso-occlusive crisis during the study, and it delayed the time that patients first experienced vaso-occlusive crisis after starting treatment from 1.4 months to 4.1 months.
Common side effects for patients taking Adakveo were back pain, nausea, pyrexia (fever) and arthralgia (joint pain). Health care professionals are advised to monitor patients for infusion-related reactions and to discontinue Adakveo for severe reactions. Patients who receive Adakveo should be monitored for interference with automated platelet counts or platelet clumping (platelet counts reported may be much lower than the actual count in the blood). Health care professionals are advised to run tests as soon as possible or use citrate tubes (a practice to avoid platelet activation).
The FDA granted this application Priority Review and Breakthrough Therapy designation, which expedites the development and review of drugs that are intended to treat a serious disease or condition and preliminary clinical evidence indicates that the drug may demonstrate substantial improvement over available therapies. Adakveo also received Orphan Drug designation, which provides incentives to assist and encourage the development of drugs for rare diseases.
