AOP Health Presents New Findings Regarding Consistent Hematologic Response of Patients With polycythaemia vera

AOP Health announced new results on ropeginterferon alfa-2b (BESREMi®) from its clinical study CONTINUATION-PV in patients with polycythaemia vera (PV), a rare blood cancer. Professor Heinz Gisslinger from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria¹ reported the findings in an abstract accepted for presentation at the prestigious EHA (European Hematology Association) 2023 Annual Meeting.

Link to CONTINUATION-PV Abstract.

Reducing the risk of thrombotic events is an important goal in the treatment of PV

The abstract accepted for presentation at the EHA 2023 Annual Meeting focused on the proportion of time individual patients spent with peripheral blood cells counts meeting the targets recommended to minimize thrombotic complications. This longitudinal analysis - an emerging method to assess thrombotic risk in PV - takes fluctuations of response over long-term treatment into account, which are not detectable in conventional analyses evaluating only a few distinct time points.

Professor Heinz Gisslinger from Vienna, first author of the paper stated that: “Results from the CONTINUATION-PV study have deepened our understanding of the benefits of long-term treatment with ropeginterferon alfa-2b, one of the few new treatments to become available for patients with PV in previous decades. This analysis demonstrates previously unknown differences between hematologic responses to ropeginterferon alfa-2b and best available treatment, which impact individual thrombotic risk.”

¹ From snapshot to continuum: cumulative time in response as an emerging proxy for thrombotic risk in polycythaemia vera. Heinz Gisslinger, Christoph Klade, Pencho Georgiev, Dorota Krochmalczyk, Liana Gercheva-Kyuchukova, Miklos Egyed, Petr Dulicek, Arpad Illes, Halyna Pylypenko, Lylia Sivcheva, Jiří Mayer, Vera Yablokova, Kurt Krejcy, Victoria Empson, Hans C. Hasselbalch, Robert Kralovics, and Jean-Jacques Kiladjian for the PROUD-PV Study Group, European Haematology Association EHA, 28^th Annual Meeting June 2023

About Polycythaemia Vera

Polycythaemia Vera (PV) is a rare cancer of the blood-building stem cells in the bone marrow resulting in a chronic increase of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. This condition increases the risk for circulatory disorders such as thrombosis and embolism, its symptoms lead to a reduced quality of life and on the long run may progress to myelofibrosis or transform to leukemia. While the molecular mechanism underlying PV is still subject of intense research, current results point to blood-building stem cells in the bone marrow with a set of acquired mutations, the most important being a mutant form of JAK2 that make up the malignant clone.

Important PV treatment goals are to achieve healthy blood counts (hematocrit below 45%), improve quality of life and to slow or delay the progression of disease.

About AOP Health

The AOP Health Group incorporates several companies including AOP Orphan Pharmaceuticals GmbH with its seat in Vienna, Austria (“AOP Health”). The AOP Health Group is the European pioneer for integrated therapies for rare diseases and in critical care. Over the past 25 years, the Group has become an established provider of integrated therapy solutions operating from its headquarters in Vienna, its subsidiaries and representative offices throughout Europe and the Middle East, as well as through partners worldwide. This development has been made possible by a continually high level of investment in research and development on the one hand and a highly consistent and pragmatic orientation towards the needs of all its stakeholders on the other – especially the patients and their families as well as also the healthcare professionals treating them.

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