Fennec Pharmaceuticals Receives Positive Opinion for Pedmarqsi™ (Sodium Thiosulfate)
Saturday, April 01, 2023
Fennec Pharmaceuticals announced that the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has issued a positive opinion and recommended granting a Marketing Authorisation for Pedmarqsi™ (sodium thiosulfate) – known as PEDMARK® in the U.S. – for the prevention of ototoxicity (hearing loss) induced by cisplatin chemotherapy in patients 1 month to <18 years of age with localised, non-metastatic, solid tumours. When formally approved by the European Commission, Pedmarqsi will be the first and only treatment approved in the European Union (EU) to address this area of significant unmet medical need.
The CHMP adopted its positive opinion on safety and efficacy data from two pivotal open-label, randomised Phase 3 trials (SIOPEL 6 and Clinical Oncology Group [COG] Protocol ACCL0431), which compared Pedmarqsi plus cisplatin-based regimen to cisplatin-based regimens alone for the reduction of cisplatin-induced hearing loss in paediatric patients. In both studies, the incidence of hearing loss was consistently and significantly lower in the Pedmarqsi plus cisplatin arm compared with the cisplatin alone arm 28.6% vs. 56.4% (p = 0.004) and 35.1% vs. 67.3% (p = 0.001) with hearing loss in COG ACCLO431 and SIOPEL6, respectively.
There are currently no approved treatments in Europe to mitigate the risk of permanent and irreversible bilateral hearing loss which occurs in approximately 60 percent of children treated with cisplatin and can be as high as 90 percent. The CHMP positive opinion brings European patients and their families closer to having a preventive treatment option to prevent the devastating consequences of hearing loss following the use of cisplatin chemotherapy, an indispensable treatment of choice in many paediatric cancer cases.
