Jaguar Health reports acceptance of abstracts on crofelemer for ESPGHAN meeting

Jaguar Health (JAGX) family company Napo Pharmaceuticals announced the acceptance of two late breaking abstracts for the treatment of pediatric IF from MVID and SBS at the 58th Annual Meeting of ESPGHAN. These pediatric IF patients are receiving liquid oral crofelemer as an investigational drug under two separate investigator-initiated trials. One infant MVID IF patient is being treated with crofelemer as adjunctive therapy to parenteral support for more than 6 months and other pediatric patients with IF due to MVID and/or SBS received crofelemer adjunctive therapy for over 1 year together with reduced amounts of parenteral support. “We are pleased with these results for the safety and effectiveness of liquid oral crofelemer as adjunctive therapy to PS pediatric IF patients on life-sustaining PS. MVID is a congenital enteropathy and has a lethal natural history if not treated with life-sustaining and lifelong total parenteral nutrition with or without supplemental intravenous fluids. MVID is estimated to have a prevalence of approximately 200 patients, and to the best of our knowledge, crofelemer is being used to treat approximately 4% of the prevalent MVID patients, with the inclusion of additional MVID patients in an ongoing blinded study. Crofelemer has demonstrated reductions in parenteral support needs for IF patients with both MVID and SBS. Crofelemer has been well tolerated, and the pediatric IF patients are gaining weight and height, demonstrating reductions in their needs for PS, especially when adjusted for body weight. This is important because TPN is associated with significant comorbidities and reductions in PS needs are expected to improve clinical outcomes as well as quality of life measures for these pediatric IF patients,” said Dr. Pravin Chaturvedi, Napo’s CSO. Napo is continuing to enroll adult patients with IF due to SBS using the same formulation of crofelemer. This randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial is being conducted at multiple sites in Germany and Italy. An investigational study in adult SBS-IF patients is also being partially supported by the company in the US.