A new hemophilia A therapy may soon hit the market that controls bleeding with fewer treatments, says Swedish drug maker Biogen Idec Inc. They released figures for late stage trials of their long-lasting recombinant Factor VIII Fc fusion protein this week.
According to the firm, the drug resulted in only 1.6 bleeds annually for patients who received the drug every 3.5 days. This is a drastic reduction in both number of bleeds and injections over previous drugs.
Mark Schoenebaum, an analyst with ISI Group in New York, says that data looks impressive:
"The annualized bleeding rate in this arm was stellar at 1.6 (well below historical averages). In addition, the weekly dosing data look very good," he tells the Washington Post.
Biogen says they hope to reach FDA approval by 2013.
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