Eltrombopag for bone marrow failure

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More than a quarter of patients with severe aplastic anemia remain pancytopenic despite immunosuppressive therapy, and others have suboptimal responses in at least one lineage. We have developed a program to ask whether use of a drug stimulating the c-mpl receptor, which binds the endogenous hormone thrombopoietin, could stimulate human hematopoietic stem cells in vivo. Murine, our own rhesus, and human data all suggest that thrombopoietin can stimulate primitive hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells to proliferate without terminal differentiation. The small molecule oral thrombopoietin mimetic eltrombopag was initially developed to overstimulate platelet production from marrow megakaryocytes to compensate for platelet destruction in immune thrombocytopenia purpura ITP). We originally developed a protocol utilizing eltrombopag in a phase 1/2 clinical trial for patients with refractory severe aplastic anemia. We reported that eltrombopag had efficacy in this setting with 44% (11/25) of patients having clinically significant hematologic responses (Olnes et al, NEJM 2012). We then reported additional safety and efficacy data on an expanded cohort of 43 patients, confirming an overall response rate or 40% with 3 to 4 months of treatment, including tri- and bilinear responses (Desmond et al, Blood, 2014). The majority of patients who remained on eltrombopag in an extension study continued to show improvement, and most eventually had significant increases in neutrophil, red cell, and platelet lineages. Those with robust near-normalization of blood counts had drug discontinued at a median of 28.5 months after entry and the vast majority maintained stable counts off eltrombopag. A subsequent trial in refractory SAA (13-H-0133) asking whether more prolonged administration of eltrombopag to patients with refractory SAA, for 6 months instead of 3 months, would improve response rate and rescue a larger fraction of refractory patients. The response rate at the primary 6 month end point was 50%, not significantly improved over the initial trial. However, 25% of patients (5/20) did not reach response criteria at 3 months but were responders at 6 months, and thus were salvaged by the more prolonged treatment. We combined both cohorts for molecular analyses asking whether EPAG impacts on clonal progression, and whether HPSC carrying mutations in specific genes linked to myeloid malignancies or other clones defined by new somatic mutations are specifically stimulated by EPAG treatment. We found no evidence for specific somatically-mutated clonal expansions related to EPAG treatment. The cytogenetic progression rate in both trials combined is now 19%. Of note, all patients that developed monosomy 7 or other deleterious chromosome 7 abnormalities did so within the first 3-6 months, suggesting potential preferential stimulation of a pre-existing clone. Other cytogenetic abnormalities appeared later, were often transient whether on or off drug, and were not accompanied by dysplastic changes or leukemic progression. This study was published recently (Winkler et al, Blood, 2019). This program resulted in FDA approval of a new labeled indication for eltrombopag in August 2014, and European commission approval in late 2015 for eltrombopag treatment of refractory aplastic anemia. This is the first new drug approved for aplastic anemia in decades and the first drug approved specifically for the refractory aplastic anemia patient population. In addition, a collaborative trial carried out with Dr Neal S Young and his Branch documented that EPAG added to standard immunosuppression for untreated severe AA resulted in improved outcomes (Townsley et al, NEJM, 2017), leading to a 2nd FDA/EHA approval for EPAG in AA based on our studies. During the current reporting period, we completed analyses of 34 patients enrolled in a clinical trial (11-H-0134) examining safety and efficacy of eltrombopag in patients with moderate aplastic anemia or unilineage cytopenias. The response rate was 50% at the primary endpoint of 4 months, including in a patient with the inherited Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA). Patients tolerated doses up to 300mg/day without significant toxicity. We noted a lower rate of cytogenetic progression (6%) than in the prior trials in severe refractory aplastic anemia, and no patients with chromosome 7 cytogenetic progression. 65% of patients were able to have EPAG discontinued for a robust multi lineage response, however the majority needed to have the drug restarted to maintain counts, in contrast to our prior experience in refractory severe aplastic anemia. This work was published in FY2020 (Fan et al, Blood Advances, 2020). Based on data generated in all three trials, we made the observation that eltrombopag acts as a clinically-relevant iron chelator, raising blood levels of iron and resulting net iron loss in patients on the drug long term. Several patients have required oral iron supplementation. We hypothesize that the activity of EPAG in reversing anemia in the inherited ribosomopathy DBA may be due to the potent intracellular chelating activity of EPAG, because recent laboratory studies suggest that erythroid development is inhibited in DBA due to slowed protein synthesis in erythroid progenitors, with a resulting imbalance in global chain production versus heme biosynthesis, leading to free heme/increased intracellular iron and toxic accumulation of reactive oxygen species. We have designed a clinical trial to test the activity of EPAG in DBA and this has been approved, with a delay in patient accrual due to COVID-19 restrictions on bringing patients to the NIH CC.