User login
CHICAGO – After rattling around in early-stage clinical studies for more than a decade, stem cell therapy for heart failure may have finally gained the efficacy evidence to send it to the next level: large-scale, phase III trials.
Patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and severe heart failure showed a statistically significant 37% relative reduction in their combined rate of death and cardiovascular hospitalization during 1 year of follow-up after autologous stem cell injections to their left ventricular myocardium in a multicenter, fully blinded control, phase II trial with 109 North American patients.
The treatment used a technique in commercial development by Vericel that selectively expands ex vivo bone marrow cells taken from the heart failure patient. Clinicians inject 0.4 mL aliquots of the expanded cells – enriched for mesenchymal stem cells and M2 macrophages – via a transcatheter approach into the left ventricular myocardium using 12-17 injections per patient. The bone marrow preparation during ex vivo expansion is called ixmyelocel-T.
This treatment now needs testing in more patients, Dr. Timothy D. Henry said at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology. “We need a new generation of cell trials in larger studies with completely double-blind, placebo controls using a more uniform preparation of cells,” said Dr. Henry.
“To the best of our knowledge, ixCELL-DCM is the largest randomized, double-blind clinical trial to date for cell therapy use in congestive heart failure,” said Dr. Henry and his associates in their report. The concept of stem cell therapy to replace damaged myocardium “has been very attractive, but most clinical trials to date have been small and unblinded, and used unselected bone marrow cells,” explained Dr. Henry, director of cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.
The ixCELL-DCM study ran at 31 sites in the United States and Canada. About 90% of patients had New York Heart Association class III disease, the average left ventricular ejection fraction was about 25%, patients on average would cover about 310 m during a 6-minute walk test, and the average serum level of NT-ProBNP was about 1,900 pg/L. Patients in the control arm all underwent the same bone marrow retrieval and transcatheter injection into the left ventricle, but the injections only contained carrier material without active cells.
The primary endpoint of death or a cardiovascular event, primarily hospitalization, occurred at a rate of 110 events per 100 patient years during 1-year follow-up of 51 patients in the sham-treatment group. In the active-treatment arm, the endpoint occurred at a rate of 70 events per 100 patient years among 58 patients. The difference was primarily driven by a 3% death rate with cell therapy, compared with a 14% rate in the controls, and a 38% hospitalization rate, compared with a 47% rate among controls.
The study results appeared online concurrent with Dr. Henry’s report (Lancet. 2016 Apr 5. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736[16]30137-4).
The results showed no significant differences between the active and sham groups for changes in left ventricular size, ejection fraction, and 6-minute walk distance.
“This trial was designed to look at events. It is not a cause for concern that we did not see effects on heart function,” Dr. Henry said. The current results were also generally consistent with results from two earlier, controlled, phase II studies with a total of 61 patients (Circ Res. 2014 Sep 26;115[8]:730-7).
In the safety analysis, done in 114 patients, the rates of all adverse events and major adverse cardiovascular events were similar in the two arms. The rate of serious adverse events was significantly reduced in the patients treated with expanded bone marrow cells, compared with the controls.
The high rate of death and hospitalization of patients with severe heart failure “is a very large, unmet need, so it’s a natural to go to a larger trial,” Dr. Henry said. “The cell preparation was very safe and easy to do.”
Another pressing research issue is to try to understand the mechanism by which the cell treatment improves clinical outcomes, with improved heart function or improved exercise capacity apparently excluded as mechanisms.
The trial was sponsored by Vericel, the company developing the ex vivo protocol for selective marrow cell expansion. Dr. Henry has been a consultant to or received honoraria from Abbott Vascular, Baxter, Capricor, Cytori, Eli Lilly, and the Medicines Company, and he has received research grants from Aastrom, Baxter International, Mesoblast, and Vericel.
On Twitter @mitchelzoler
The results reported by Dr. Henry come from one of the first trials of stem cell or bone marrow treatment of failing hearts that used clinical outcomes as the primary endpoint. In contrast, prior studies focused on changes in functional characteristics of patients, such as 6-minute walk distance or left ventricular ejection fraction or size. What makes Dr. Henry’s study distinctive is that it showed benefit for a clinical outcome: the rate of death or cardiovascular hospitalization.
Another distinct difference, compared with the vast majority of earlier trials, was the way the bone marrow was handled prior to placement in a heart. The bone marrow cells underwent a 12-day period of ex vivo treatment designed to expand the content of certain mesenchymal stem cells and macrophages.
The current study was also larger than most prior reported studies, with 114 randomized patients available for the safety analysis and 109 for the efficacy analysis. But by no means was this a large study; in fact, it is relatively small. Although it produced a statistically significant result for the primary endpoint, the efficacy needs expanded testing in larger numbers.
It’s currently unclear how the expanded bone marrow cell injections improve clinical status and lead to reduced deaths and hospitalization. The results show essentially no impact from the treatment on ejection fraction or 6-minute walk distance, raising the question of what alternative mechanisms link this treatment to improved clinical outcomes.
Until now, it has not been possible to move beyond early-stage trial designs for cell therapy of failing hearts. Now, for the first time, we have study results that suggest a phase III trial is indicated.
The video associated with this article is no longer available on this site. Please view all of our videos on the MDedge YouTube channel
Dr. John A. Jarcho is a deputy editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston. He had no disclosures. He made these comments as a discussant of Dr. Henry’s report and in an interview.
The results reported by Dr. Henry come from one of the first trials of stem cell or bone marrow treatment of failing hearts that used clinical outcomes as the primary endpoint. In contrast, prior studies focused on changes in functional characteristics of patients, such as 6-minute walk distance or left ventricular ejection fraction or size. What makes Dr. Henry’s study distinctive is that it showed benefit for a clinical outcome: the rate of death or cardiovascular hospitalization.
Another distinct difference, compared with the vast majority of earlier trials, was the way the bone marrow was handled prior to placement in a heart. The bone marrow cells underwent a 12-day period of ex vivo treatment designed to expand the content of certain mesenchymal stem cells and macrophages.
The current study was also larger than most prior reported studies, with 114 randomized patients available for the safety analysis and 109 for the efficacy analysis. But by no means was this a large study; in fact, it is relatively small. Although it produced a statistically significant result for the primary endpoint, the efficacy needs expanded testing in larger numbers.
It’s currently unclear how the expanded bone marrow cell injections improve clinical status and lead to reduced deaths and hospitalization. The results show essentially no impact from the treatment on ejection fraction or 6-minute walk distance, raising the question of what alternative mechanisms link this treatment to improved clinical outcomes.
Until now, it has not been possible to move beyond early-stage trial designs for cell therapy of failing hearts. Now, for the first time, we have study results that suggest a phase III trial is indicated.
The video associated with this article is no longer available on this site. Please view all of our videos on the MDedge YouTube channel
Dr. John A. Jarcho is a deputy editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston. He had no disclosures. He made these comments as a discussant of Dr. Henry’s report and in an interview.
The results reported by Dr. Henry come from one of the first trials of stem cell or bone marrow treatment of failing hearts that used clinical outcomes as the primary endpoint. In contrast, prior studies focused on changes in functional characteristics of patients, such as 6-minute walk distance or left ventricular ejection fraction or size. What makes Dr. Henry’s study distinctive is that it showed benefit for a clinical outcome: the rate of death or cardiovascular hospitalization.
Another distinct difference, compared with the vast majority of earlier trials, was the way the bone marrow was handled prior to placement in a heart. The bone marrow cells underwent a 12-day period of ex vivo treatment designed to expand the content of certain mesenchymal stem cells and macrophages.
The current study was also larger than most prior reported studies, with 114 randomized patients available for the safety analysis and 109 for the efficacy analysis. But by no means was this a large study; in fact, it is relatively small. Although it produced a statistically significant result for the primary endpoint, the efficacy needs expanded testing in larger numbers.
It’s currently unclear how the expanded bone marrow cell injections improve clinical status and lead to reduced deaths and hospitalization. The results show essentially no impact from the treatment on ejection fraction or 6-minute walk distance, raising the question of what alternative mechanisms link this treatment to improved clinical outcomes.
Until now, it has not been possible to move beyond early-stage trial designs for cell therapy of failing hearts. Now, for the first time, we have study results that suggest a phase III trial is indicated.
The video associated with this article is no longer available on this site. Please view all of our videos on the MDedge YouTube channel
Dr. John A. Jarcho is a deputy editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston. He had no disclosures. He made these comments as a discussant of Dr. Henry’s report and in an interview.
CHICAGO – After rattling around in early-stage clinical studies for more than a decade, stem cell therapy for heart failure may have finally gained the efficacy evidence to send it to the next level: large-scale, phase III trials.
Patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and severe heart failure showed a statistically significant 37% relative reduction in their combined rate of death and cardiovascular hospitalization during 1 year of follow-up after autologous stem cell injections to their left ventricular myocardium in a multicenter, fully blinded control, phase II trial with 109 North American patients.
The treatment used a technique in commercial development by Vericel that selectively expands ex vivo bone marrow cells taken from the heart failure patient. Clinicians inject 0.4 mL aliquots of the expanded cells – enriched for mesenchymal stem cells and M2 macrophages – via a transcatheter approach into the left ventricular myocardium using 12-17 injections per patient. The bone marrow preparation during ex vivo expansion is called ixmyelocel-T.
This treatment now needs testing in more patients, Dr. Timothy D. Henry said at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology. “We need a new generation of cell trials in larger studies with completely double-blind, placebo controls using a more uniform preparation of cells,” said Dr. Henry.
“To the best of our knowledge, ixCELL-DCM is the largest randomized, double-blind clinical trial to date for cell therapy use in congestive heart failure,” said Dr. Henry and his associates in their report. The concept of stem cell therapy to replace damaged myocardium “has been very attractive, but most clinical trials to date have been small and unblinded, and used unselected bone marrow cells,” explained Dr. Henry, director of cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.
The ixCELL-DCM study ran at 31 sites in the United States and Canada. About 90% of patients had New York Heart Association class III disease, the average left ventricular ejection fraction was about 25%, patients on average would cover about 310 m during a 6-minute walk test, and the average serum level of NT-ProBNP was about 1,900 pg/L. Patients in the control arm all underwent the same bone marrow retrieval and transcatheter injection into the left ventricle, but the injections only contained carrier material without active cells.
The primary endpoint of death or a cardiovascular event, primarily hospitalization, occurred at a rate of 110 events per 100 patient years during 1-year follow-up of 51 patients in the sham-treatment group. In the active-treatment arm, the endpoint occurred at a rate of 70 events per 100 patient years among 58 patients. The difference was primarily driven by a 3% death rate with cell therapy, compared with a 14% rate in the controls, and a 38% hospitalization rate, compared with a 47% rate among controls.
The study results appeared online concurrent with Dr. Henry’s report (Lancet. 2016 Apr 5. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736[16]30137-4).
The results showed no significant differences between the active and sham groups for changes in left ventricular size, ejection fraction, and 6-minute walk distance.
“This trial was designed to look at events. It is not a cause for concern that we did not see effects on heart function,” Dr. Henry said. The current results were also generally consistent with results from two earlier, controlled, phase II studies with a total of 61 patients (Circ Res. 2014 Sep 26;115[8]:730-7).
In the safety analysis, done in 114 patients, the rates of all adverse events and major adverse cardiovascular events were similar in the two arms. The rate of serious adverse events was significantly reduced in the patients treated with expanded bone marrow cells, compared with the controls.
The high rate of death and hospitalization of patients with severe heart failure “is a very large, unmet need, so it’s a natural to go to a larger trial,” Dr. Henry said. “The cell preparation was very safe and easy to do.”
Another pressing research issue is to try to understand the mechanism by which the cell treatment improves clinical outcomes, with improved heart function or improved exercise capacity apparently excluded as mechanisms.
The trial was sponsored by Vericel, the company developing the ex vivo protocol for selective marrow cell expansion. Dr. Henry has been a consultant to or received honoraria from Abbott Vascular, Baxter, Capricor, Cytori, Eli Lilly, and the Medicines Company, and he has received research grants from Aastrom, Baxter International, Mesoblast, and Vericel.
On Twitter @mitchelzoler
CHICAGO – After rattling around in early-stage clinical studies for more than a decade, stem cell therapy for heart failure may have finally gained the efficacy evidence to send it to the next level: large-scale, phase III trials.
Patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy and severe heart failure showed a statistically significant 37% relative reduction in their combined rate of death and cardiovascular hospitalization during 1 year of follow-up after autologous stem cell injections to their left ventricular myocardium in a multicenter, fully blinded control, phase II trial with 109 North American patients.
The treatment used a technique in commercial development by Vericel that selectively expands ex vivo bone marrow cells taken from the heart failure patient. Clinicians inject 0.4 mL aliquots of the expanded cells – enriched for mesenchymal stem cells and M2 macrophages – via a transcatheter approach into the left ventricular myocardium using 12-17 injections per patient. The bone marrow preparation during ex vivo expansion is called ixmyelocel-T.
This treatment now needs testing in more patients, Dr. Timothy D. Henry said at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology. “We need a new generation of cell trials in larger studies with completely double-blind, placebo controls using a more uniform preparation of cells,” said Dr. Henry.
“To the best of our knowledge, ixCELL-DCM is the largest randomized, double-blind clinical trial to date for cell therapy use in congestive heart failure,” said Dr. Henry and his associates in their report. The concept of stem cell therapy to replace damaged myocardium “has been very attractive, but most clinical trials to date have been small and unblinded, and used unselected bone marrow cells,” explained Dr. Henry, director of cardiology at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.
The ixCELL-DCM study ran at 31 sites in the United States and Canada. About 90% of patients had New York Heart Association class III disease, the average left ventricular ejection fraction was about 25%, patients on average would cover about 310 m during a 6-minute walk test, and the average serum level of NT-ProBNP was about 1,900 pg/L. Patients in the control arm all underwent the same bone marrow retrieval and transcatheter injection into the left ventricle, but the injections only contained carrier material without active cells.
The primary endpoint of death or a cardiovascular event, primarily hospitalization, occurred at a rate of 110 events per 100 patient years during 1-year follow-up of 51 patients in the sham-treatment group. In the active-treatment arm, the endpoint occurred at a rate of 70 events per 100 patient years among 58 patients. The difference was primarily driven by a 3% death rate with cell therapy, compared with a 14% rate in the controls, and a 38% hospitalization rate, compared with a 47% rate among controls.
The study results appeared online concurrent with Dr. Henry’s report (Lancet. 2016 Apr 5. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736[16]30137-4).
The results showed no significant differences between the active and sham groups for changes in left ventricular size, ejection fraction, and 6-minute walk distance.
“This trial was designed to look at events. It is not a cause for concern that we did not see effects on heart function,” Dr. Henry said. The current results were also generally consistent with results from two earlier, controlled, phase II studies with a total of 61 patients (Circ Res. 2014 Sep 26;115[8]:730-7).
In the safety analysis, done in 114 patients, the rates of all adverse events and major adverse cardiovascular events were similar in the two arms. The rate of serious adverse events was significantly reduced in the patients treated with expanded bone marrow cells, compared with the controls.
The high rate of death and hospitalization of patients with severe heart failure “is a very large, unmet need, so it’s a natural to go to a larger trial,” Dr. Henry said. “The cell preparation was very safe and easy to do.”
Another pressing research issue is to try to understand the mechanism by which the cell treatment improves clinical outcomes, with improved heart function or improved exercise capacity apparently excluded as mechanisms.
The trial was sponsored by Vericel, the company developing the ex vivo protocol for selective marrow cell expansion. Dr. Henry has been a consultant to or received honoraria from Abbott Vascular, Baxter, Capricor, Cytori, Eli Lilly, and the Medicines Company, and he has received research grants from Aastrom, Baxter International, Mesoblast, and Vericel.
On Twitter @mitchelzoler
AT ACC 16
Key clinical point: Severe, ischemic heart failure patients had a significant cut in death and cardiovascular hospitalizations 1 year after endovascular myocardial injection with selectively expanded autologous bone marrow cells in a fully blinded, placebo-controlled phase II study.
Major finding: Cell-treated patients had a 37% drop in death and cardiovascular hospitalization relative to controls in 1-year follow-up.
Data source: A multicenter, fully blinded study with 109 patients for the per protocol efficacy analysis, and 114 patients for the safety analysis.
Disclosures: The trial was sponsored by Vericel, the company developing the ex vivo protocol for selective marrow cell expansion. Dr. Henry has been a consultant to or received honoraria from Abbott Vascular, Baxter, Capricor, Cytori, Eli Lilly, and the Medicines Company, and he has received research grants from Aastrom, Baxter International, Mesoblast, and Vericel.
