« Older Entries

Inside Clinuvel: Rare diseases day 2013 – rare diseases across borders

Thursday, February 28th, 2013

Today, February 28, marks Rare Disease Day: an annual event to help highlight the effects of rare diseases on individuals, families and the community, and to raise awareness in the hope of finding treatments, or even cures. As a snapshot, a rare disease is defined in Europe as one which affects less than 1 in 200,000 people. Some 6,000-8,000 rare diseases have been identified to date, and it’s estimated that up to 30 million people across the European Union and another 30 million across the US are affected by a rare disease.

Clinuvel takes an active stance on patients’ rights – we’re working hard to get SCENESSE® approved for the rare light intolerance erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP). This year’s theme Rare Diseases Without Borders resonates with us particularly, as it recognises the global challenges that rare disease patients, and those working with them, face. Cultural and linguistic challenges aside, to get a new drug to rare disease patients one must find those patients then tackle myriad national, regional and local laws and regulations every step of the way. In short, a more cohesive, multinational approach is needed to better address the needs of rare disease patients. (more…)

Q&A: SCENESSE® successful in Phase IIa vitiligo study

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

We’ve just released the first results from our vitiligo program which you can view online here. Following their release, we expect a number of questions from the vitiligo community, some of which we hope to address below. If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us via Facebook or email.

What was the CUV102 study?

CUV102 was an open-label Phase IIa study conducted in three US expert centres (The Vitiligo & Pigmentation Institute of Southern California in Los Angeles, The Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and Mount Sinai Hospital in New York). The trial was designed as a ‘proof-of-concept’: to explore the potential of SCENESSE® to repigment depigmented skin in vitiligo. In total, 54 patients enrolled in the study and 41 completed the full treatment course. All of these patients were of Fitzpatrick skin types III-VI, generally darker skin types. (more…)

Inside Clinuvel: NICE, QALYs and the UK’s reimbursement landscape

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

Following much hype and fanfare at the Olympics, news reports have begun to trickle out on the costs of the Games and the longer term impact they might have on the British economy. While not immune to Europe’s economic spluttering across the Channel, many of the issues facing Britain’s bottom line are unique, and they may have broader implications for drug development, more specifically for drug pricing and reimbursement. (more…)

Inside Clinuvel: SCENESSE® in acne?

Monday, August 6th, 2012

A new article was published last week looking at a small pilot study of SCENESSE® (afamelanotide) in acne vulgaris. Before discussing this piece specifically, I think it is relevant to briefly review melanocortins and their receptors.

The active ingredient in SCENESSE®, afamelanotide, has been the focus of over 80 peer reviewed journals (as well as being mentioned in at least 100 more) since the initial formulatory work with the drug began in the 1980s. In the last two years alone the drug and its actual or theoretical application in the clinic have been presented at least 20 times at various global scientific forums. This growing library of resources reflects the enthusiasm of the medical community to put a new compound through its paces, both in vitro and in vivo. (more…)

Inside Clinuvel: effective drug development

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012

Take ten years, half a billion dollars and countless man hours from some of the most highly trained, intelligent individuals on the globe. You still stand a 90% chance of failure, some of which is totally out of your control. This is the apparent reality of modern drug development.

With the odds so stacked against it, it’s little wonder that the drug development sector is one requiring constant evolution in rethinking how to survive. In addition to the ‘regular’ risks of drug development, turmoil in global markets since 2007 has seen risk adverse investors shun drug development and biotechnology stocks for blue chip companies which are perceived as safer. The pressure to perform has increased for those companies who continue to work in the space.

In short, it’s forced even greater creativity to ensure survival and prosperity. (more…)

Return to core pharma values

Monday, July 9th, 2012

Several recent stories have caught the industry’s attention and set media imaginations alight, but none moreso than last week’s record-breaking US$3B marketing settlement between pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline and the US government. In short, GSK plead guilty to withholding safety data and illegal marketing practices related to three drugs and agreed to pay US$1B in criminal fines and US$2B to resolve civil complaints with the federal and several state governments. (more…)

Delivering a therapy for those who need it most: EPP in Switzerland

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Earlier today we announced that two health insurers in Switzerland had agreed to reimburse SCENESSE® (afamelanotide) for the rare disease erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP). While this is an encouraging step forward for the program and for Swiss patients, I felt it appropriate to take a moment to discuss the important role that Switzerland has played, and continues to play, in our EPP program.

In 2006 Clinuvel announced that it would commence a new clinical trial program focused on an unknown disease in a small open label study. At the time I noted that our aim was to “provide a prophylactic treatment for [a] debilitating and incurable skin disorder”. (more…)

EPP results and clinical relevance

Friday, November 4th, 2011

A protoporphyrin IX molecule

Over recent months I have written several times of the need for Clinuvel to prove clinical relevance in our trials with the use of SCENESSE® (afamelanotide) in erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP). In orphan populations the need to demonstrate how a novel drug assists in their daily activities and improve their lives is at the forefront of the regulators’ minds. And so it should be, after all the objective of the pharmaceutical industry is to develop drugs which address either disease or symptoms adequately and safely. The results the company released yesterday from our Phase II US study of the drug in EPP (CUV030) have given us important data towards demonstrating clinically relevant improvement of patients’ lives. (more…)

Clinical relevance – the value of patient experiences

Friday, September 30th, 2011

Since 2006 Clinuvel has trialed SCENESSE® in a truly unique group of individuals: patients living with erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP), a rare genetic blood disorder which causes an absolute intolerance to light.

EPP prevents patients from leading ‘normal’ lives, especially outdoors. It is one of the few diseases that manifest clinically with initially invisible symptoms which cause severe dermal pain for several days. This not only presents a challenge for diagnosis and treatment, but also for generating meaningful clinical trial results – those which are measurable numerically and are used by regulatory authorities to evaluate the efficacy of a drug in a patient population. Here, real life patient experiences during a trial can play an important role in providing clinical relevance and analysing hard data. (more…)

The importance of clinical relevance

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

Development of novel drugs is truly like no other business: one attempts to address questions that may have never been previously posed – let alone answered – in the pursuit of improving the lives and quality of life of patients. As I eluded to in my recent letter to shareholders, the team is now well into the analysis of results from our erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP) program; two studies from the US and Europe. This is a complex and time consuming task that requires one to collate and make sense of thousands of data points to answer a seemingly straight forward question: does this trial show that the drug is safe and effective?

Obtaining an answer needs to be understood from the concept of clinical relevance. Put simply, results don’t just need to show that a treatment or intervention has an effect on a disease. Rather, they need to indicate that that effect is relevant to the current clinical understanding, treatment and care for the disease or indication. They need to show that the drug’s effect is having a positive, meaningful impact upon a patient’s prognosis and care. This is a crucial point to consider in the development of protocols and in the careful analysis of results, as it is how regulators will review the results. (more…)

« Older Entries