(Press-News.org) SAN FRANCISCO (March 10, 2013) — The experimental anti-clotting drug cangrelor solidly outperformed commonly used clopidogrel in a large global trial of patients who underwent coronary stent procedures, according to data from the phase III CHAMPION PHOENIX study presented today at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session.
Cangrelor and clopidogrel interfere with the P2Y12 receptor, a platelet-surface protein that helps regulate blood clotting. Currently approved drugs in this class are effective in cutting down ischemic events—blood-flow reductions that can cause heart attack and stroke— in patients who need percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), but they have important clinical limitations: they're slow to take effect, remain active for days and come only in pill form. For patients on recent anti-platelet therapy who need timely coronary intervention, that profile poses risk of surgical bleeding if the drug is still active or risk from postponing surgery until the drug's effect wears off. Additionally, oral drugs present problems for anyone who urgently needs stenting and is in no condition to swallow or absorb a clot-preventing pill. Cangrelor is administered intravenously, takes effect rapidly and wears off an hour after the infusion ends.
CHAMPION PHOENIX, a randomized double-blind trial, pitted the novel IV drug cangrelor against the oral clopidogrel standard of care in approximately 11,000 patients at 153 centers around the world. An "all-comers" clinical trial, it included a broad cross-section of patients with every type of acute coronary syndrome, angina and other conditions for which people undergo PCI, as long as they had no recent exposure to a P2Y12 inhibitor and could swallow a pill. Other exclusion criteria included recent use of anti-clotting agents called GP IIb/IIIa inhibitors or fibrinolytics and specific indications of high risk of bleeding.
Cangrelor performed significantly better than clopidogrel across efficacy measures: 4.7 percent vs. 5.9 percent, or a 22 percent reduction in the odds of the primary endpoint, which was composite incidence of death, myocardial infarction, ischemia-driven revascularization or stent thrombosis at 48 hours after randomization. Cangrelor also showed a 38 percent reduction in the odds of the key secondary endpoint, incidence of stent thrombosis at 48 hours. Both treatment arms showed a low, statistically comparable incidence for the safety endpoint of severe bleeding at 48 hours: 0.16 percent vs. 0.11 percent. The efficacy and safety results were consistent in all commonly reported subgroups.
"These are endpoints we worry about a lot in interventional cardiology and cardiology in general," said Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, chief of cardiology at VA Boston Healthcare System, senior physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston and, along with Robert A. Harrington, MD, chairman of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, co-principal investigator. "This study examined a very wide spectrum of patients, which means the results really do apply to a substantial percentage of patients undergoing stent procedures around the world."
The company plans to file for approval with the Food and Drug Administration using data from CHAMPION PHOENIX and the earlier BRIDGE trial.
"The investigators feel the data are compelling," Dr. Bhatt explained. "The data we've shown are clear and consistent across all relevant subgroups or patient populations. This drug has several advantages, and nothing out there right now has quite the same biological properties."
### The Medicines Company sponsored the CHAMPION PHOENIX trial and provided a research grant to the Duke Clinical Research Institute for the statistical analyses and event adjudication.
The ACC's Annual Scientific Session brings together cardiologists and cardiovascular specialists from around the world each year to share the newest discoveries in treatment and prevention. Follow @ACCMediaCenter and #ACC13 for the latest news from the meeting.
The American College of Cardiology is a nonprofit medical society comprised of 43,000 physicians, surgeons, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists and practice managers. The College is dedicated to transforming cardiovascular care, improving heart health and advancing quality improvement, patient-centered care, payment innovation and professionalism. The ACC also leads the formation of important cardiovascular health policy, standards and guidelines. It bestows credentials upon cardiovascular specialists, provides professional education, supports and disseminates cardiovascular research, and operates national registries to measure and promote quality care. For more information, visit cardiosource.org.
Cangrelor superior to clopidogrel in CHAMPION PHOENIX trial
IV drug uniquely fast, reversible anti-clotting action has broad utility in cardiology
2013-03-11
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
New anti-clotting drug more effective than current treatment
2013-03-11
A new and experimental anti-clotting drug, cangrelor, proved better than the commonly used clopidogrel and was significantly more effective at preventing blood clots in a large trial of patients who underwent coronary stent procedures. These data, from the phase III CHAMPION PHOENIX study, were presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session and published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers report that the new drug, which is administered intravenously, reduced the odds of complications from stenting procedures. ...
Magnet ingestion by young children serious and growing problem
2013-03-11
Physicians and parents must be aware of the growing danger of magnet ingestion by children because magnets can adhere to each other and cause life-threatening problems such as bowel perforations, a new case study illustrates in CMAJ.
"Modern magnet technology has transformed what was once an esoteric subtype of foreign-body ingestion into a common and lethal threat," writes Dr. Daniel Rosenfield, Department of Paediatrics, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), with coauthors.
In the past, magnet ingestion generally could be treated with a wait-and-see approach, ...
Therapies for ALL and AML targeting MER receptor hold promise of more effect with less side-effect
2013-03-11
Two University of Colorado Cancer Center studies show that the protein receptor Mer is overexpressed in many leukemias, and that inhibition of this Mer receptor results in the death of leukemia cells – without affecting surrounding, healthy cells.
The first study, published today in the journal Oncogene, worked with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), for which current chemotherapies offer a cure rate of only about 55 percent.
"In about 2/3 of all AML patients and about 90 percent of adult AML patients, we found that the Mer receptor was upregulated. Mer receptor protein ...
EARTH: Well-healed faults produce high-frequency earthquake waves
2013-03-11
Alexandria, VA – Much like our voices create sound waves with a variety of low and high pitches, or frequencies, earthquakes produce seismic waves over a broad spectrum. The seismic waves' frequencies determine, in part, how far they travel and how damaging they are to human-made structures. However, the inaccessibility of fault zones means that very little is known about why and how earthquakes produce different frequencies. With the help of a new tabletop model, scientists have now identified how a process known as fault healing can shape seismic waves and potentially ...
BGI Tech develops novel 'Ultra-Deep de novo' assembly solution for heterozygous genomes
2013-03-11
Shenzhen, China, March 11, 2013- BGI Tech Solutions Co., Ltd., also referred to as "BGI Tech", introduced today its novel assembly solution for facilitating heterozygous genomes research. This marks another technological breakthrough for BGI in heterozygous genome assembly after the completed genome sequencing of oyster, diamondback moth and pear.
The availability of a reference genome for a species is the cornerstone for the in-depth understanding of its biological secrets and commercial values. However, a major obstacle that prevents scientists to easily crack the genome ...
Gun retailers take a hard line on illegal firearm sales, UC Davis survey finds
2013-03-11
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —A scientific survey of more than 1,600 gun retailers in the U.S. has found that gun buyers frequently try to make illegal purchases and that gun retailers take a dim view of fellow sellers who engage in illegal activity — regardless of whether they are actively breaking the law or simply looking the other way.
The survey, conducted in 2011 by Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, is believed to be the first scientific study of a large group of gun retailers to determine ...
An Internet for robots
2013-03-11
Researchers of five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers - the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon - for robotics tasks and robot learning.
With the development of the RoboEarth Cloud Engine the team continues their work towards creating an Internet for robots. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge ...
Researchers solve riddle of what has been holding 2 unlikely materials together
2013-03-11
For years, researchers have developed thin films of bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) – which converts heat into electricity or electricity to cooling – on top of gallium arsenide (GaAs) to create cooling devices for electronics. But while they knew it could be done, it was not clear how – because the atomic structures of those unlikely pair of materials do not appear to be compatible. Now researchers from North Carolina State University and RTI International have solved the mystery, opening the door to new research in the field.
"We've used state-of-the-art technology to solve ...
Amplified greenhouse effect shifts north's growing seasons
2013-03-11
Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study based on a 30-year record of land surface and newly improved satellite data sets.
An international team of university and NASA scientists examined the relationship between changes in surface temperature and vegetation growth from 45 degrees north latitude to the Arctic Ocean. Results show temperature and vegetation growth at northern latitudes now resemble those found 4 degrees to 6 degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 1982.
"Higher ...
Nerve damage may underlie widespread, unexplained chronic pain in children
2013-03-11
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have described what may be a newly identified disease that appears to explain some cases of widespread chronic pain and other symptoms in children and young adults. Their report that will appear in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics, and has received early online release, finds that most of a group of young patients seen at the MGH for chronic, unexplained pain had test results indicating small-fiber polyneuropathy, a condition not previously reported in children. The MGH investigators call this new syndrome juvenile-onset ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Six leading organizations unite to launch the pediatric heart transplant alliance
Effect of coupled wing motion on the aerodynamic performance during different flight stages of pigeon
Cercus electric stimulation enables cockroach with trajectory control and spatial cognition training
Day-long conference addresses difficult to diagnose lung disease
First-ever cardiogenic shock academy features simulation lab
Thirty-year mystery of dissonance in the “ringing” of black holes explained
Less intensive works best for agricultural soil
Arctic rivers project receives “national champion” designation from frontiers foundation
Computational biology paves the way for new ALS tests
Study offers new hope for babies born with opioid withdrawal syndrome
UT, Volkswagen Group of America celebrate research partnership
New Medicare program could dramatically improve affordability for cancer drugs – if patients enroll
Are ‘zombie’ skin cells harmful or helpful? The answer may be in their shapes
University of Cincinnati Cancer Center presents research at AACR 2025
Head and neck, breast, lung and survivorship studies headline Dana-Farber research at AACR Annual Meeting 2025
AACR: Researchers share promising results from MD Anderson clinical trials
New research explains why our waistlines expand in middle age
Advancements in muon detection: Taishan Antineutrino Observatory's innovative top veto tracker
Chips off the old block
Microvascular decompression combined with nerve combing for atypical trigeminal neuralgia
Cutting the complexity from digital carpentry
Lung immune cell type “quietly” controls inflammation in COVID-19
Fiscal impact of expanded Medicare coverage for GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat obesity
State and sociodemographic trends in US cigarette smoking with future projections
Young adults drive historic decline in smoking
NFCR congratulates Dr. Robert C. Bast, Jr. on receiving the AACR-Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research
Chimpanzee stem cells offer new insights into early embryonic development
This injected protein-like polymer helps tissues heal after a heart attack
FlexTech inaugural issue launches, pioneering interdisciplinary innovation in flexible technology
In Down syndrome mice, 40Hz light and sound improve cognition, neurogenesis, connectivity
[Press-News.org] Cangrelor superior to clopidogrel in CHAMPION PHOENIX trialIV drug uniquely fast, reversible anti-clotting action has broad utility in cardiology