The FDA granted marketing approval for Jazz Pharmaceutical’s Defitelio (defibrotide sodium) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with hepatic Veno-Occlusive Disease (VOD), also known as sinusoidal obstruction syndrome (SOS), with renal or pulmonary dysfunction following Hematopoietic Stem-Cell Transplantation (HSCT).

"FDA's approval of Defitelio underscores the importance of Defitelio to children and adults as the first and only proven treatment for this rare and often deadly complication of stem-cell transplantation. Defitelio is a clinically significant therapeutic advance because it is a potentially curative intervention for patients with VOD, which may save lives with a single course of therapy. Before today, patients in the U.S. had no approved options," said Bruce Cozadd, chairman and chief executive officer of Jazz Pharmaceuticals. "The commercial availability of Defitelio in the U.S. demonstrates Jazz Pharmaceuticals' continued commitment to bringing meaningful new treatments to patients to fill high unmet medical needs."

The FDA approval of Defitelio is supported by efficacy data from three clinical studies in patients with hepatic VOD with renal or pulmonary dysfunction following HSCT who were treated with Defitelio at the recommended 6.25mg/kg every six hours; results are provided in the table below.

The safety of Defitelio to support approval is based on data from 176 patients in the clinical development program for the treatment of VOD with renal and/or pulmonary dysfunction following HSCT who were treated with Defitelio. The most common adverse reactions (incidence 10% and independent of causality) with Defitelio treatment were hypotension (low blood pressure), diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and epistaxis (nose bleeds). The most common serious adverse reactions (incidence 5% and independent of causality) were hypotension (11%) and pulmonary alveolar hemorrhage (7%).

"VOD/SOS is a devastating condition, which can develop without warning after stem-cell transplantation and can progress rapidly causing severe kidney or lung dysfunction and lead to multi-organ failure. Thus, it can derail a patient's recovery from the curative intent of a stem-cell transplant, with patients who develop VOD/SOS and multi-organ failure facing an overall mortality rate of over 80%," said Paul G. Richardson, M.D., director of clinical research at the LeBow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the RJ Corman Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. "Defitelio thus fulfills an unmet need having shown a consistent Day +100 patient survival benefit across three large prospective studies. Importantly, Defitelio provides transplant teams with the first approved treatment option that can help return patients to the road to recovery."