The US Food and Drug Administration recently approved Lumoxiti (moxetumomab pasudotox-tdfk) injection for intravenous use for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory hairy cell leukemia (HCL) who have received at least two prior systemic therapies, including treatment with a purine nucleoside analog.
Lumoxiti is a CD22-directed cytotoxin and is the first of this type of treatment for patients with HCL.
‘Lumoxiti fills an unmet need for patients with HCL whose disease has progressed after trying other FDA-approved therapies,’ said Richard Pazdur, MD, Director of the FDA’s Oncology Centre of Excellence, and Acting Director of the Office of Haematology and Oncology Products in the FDA’s Centre for Drug Evaluation and Research.
‘This therapy is the result of important research conducted by the National Cancer Institute that led to the development and clinical trials of this new type of treatment for patients with this rare blood cancer.’
HCL is a rare, slow-growing cancer of the blood in which the bone marrow makes too many B cells (lymphocytes), a type of white blood cell that fights infection. HCL is named after these extra B cells which look ‘hairy’ when viewed under a microscope. As the number of leukemia cells increases, fewer healthy white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets are produced.
