“Patients who undergo knee replacement routinely receive anti-clotting treatment with enoxaparin or other anticoagulant medications that require daily administration,” Jeffrey Weitz said.
“With a single injection of abelacimab after surgery, we found much better protection against clots in the veins in the leg compared with enoxaparin, one of the current standards of care.”
Patients were closely monitored for symptoms or signs of clotting or bleeding and underwent an x-ray of the veins of the operated leg to detect any possible clot formation.
“This success of abelacimab in this study provides the foundation for its use for prevention of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation and for treatment of deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, clots in the veins of the leg and clots in the lung, in patients with cancer,” said Weitz.
Abelacimab binds to both the inactive and activated forms of factor XI, thereby halting clot formation.
Factor XI was found to be a key driver of clot formation after surgery, Weitz said, adding that the fact that abelacimab was more effective than enoxaparin, which inhibits clotting factors downstream to factor XI, highlights the importance of factor XI in clot formation.
“We expect factor XI to be a safer target for new anticoagulants than the targets of currently available anticoagulants because patients with congenital factor XI deficiency are at reduced risk for clots but rarely have spontaneous bleeding,” he said.
Weitz said new anti-clotting medications are often tested first on patients undergoing orthopedic surgery. Different doses of the drug can be evaluated to identify those that are both effective and safe compared with the standard of care such as enoxaparin.
Source: Medindia
