“We have already submitted the request for approval of this drug to Aifa, to our regulatory body. But through what in Italy is coded as Gsk Aid (Patient assistance programme, ed.)”, momelotinib “is already available to patients with myelofibrosis and of the clinicians who request it. We, as the Italian medical management, take care of this, together with the global team. The doctor who sees an opportunity for this product for one of his patients can request it and we, through a questionnaire that identifies the characteristics. that correspond to where the drug has produced effectiveness, we activate the internal request. If the request complies, within 2, maximum 3 weeks it is approved and the drug reaches the patient for as long as it is necessary and for all the time. which will benefit from it and which, compared to clinical data, may be years. Currently in Italy more than 230 patients have been treated, an important number if we consider the difficulty of identifying this pathology”. Thus Maria Sofia Rosati, medical director and director of Oncohematology Italy GSK, participating today in Verona in the meeting with journalists organized by the pharmaceutical company.
Over the years, recalls Rosati, “important drugs have been developed that can change the course of myelofibrosis”, effective “especially on the control of the disease itself, but also on the part linked to the quality of life. GSK has intervened in this process with the patient , alongside the patient. We not only developed a drug, but we did it thinking about his needs.” And momelotinib, which is a Jak inhibitor, “will allow us to offer these patients the opportunity not only to live a better life, but to free themselves, or at least improve, one of the most important components, transfusion-dependence, which is the typical characteristic of these often severely anemic patients”.
Myelofibrosis is “a pathology that is unfortunately still little known, silent but extremely destructive in the daily life of those affected because it has an important impact on the quality of life, perhaps more than many others – observes the director of oncology GSK Italia – The pathology is in fact burdened by the fact that, for years, the patient is seen by various doctors without arriving at a diagnosis” and so “he continues to have symptoms such as terrible difficulty in living his daily life”, without “understanding why the tiredness he feels” is often attributed “to depression or work problems but, in reality, behind it there is a very important “oncohaematological” disease which involves limitations in his life and that of the people close to him”.
The patient with myelofibrosis has anemia which, in addition to being responsible for disabling symptoms such as chronic fatigue, forces him to undergo transfusions. “Imagine – underlines Rosati – the impact of this condition on the life of a patient who has to go to hospital, in most cases, given the age of the incidence of the pathology, accompanied by a family member or caregiver, to be transfused once or several times a week. There is a limitation not only in his personal life, but also in that of those who accompany him, with an important social impact”. In this regard, “the technology we are developing, the Jak inhibitor drug recently approved by the European Agency (EMA) – he reiterates – allows many of these patients to be able to free themselves from or at least limit the need for transfusions. It is a small step, but it's great if we put ourselves in the shoes of all these patients who are affected by it. But our ambition – concludes Rosati – remains to defeat the disease”.
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