Shield Therapeutics sees Feraccru effectiveness backed up by real-world study

Specialty pharmaceutical company Shield Therapeutics on Thursday revealed that real-world clinical data has supported the effectiveness of its ferric iron therapy, Feraccru.

The AIM-traded company said the iron deficiency treatment’s use in a FRESH (Feraccru real world effectiveness study in hospital practice) study conducted with patients suffering from inflammatory bowel disease across seven UK hospitals resulted in 62% of subjects registering a normalised level of haemoglobin after 12 weeks.

Fraser Cummings, consultant gastroenterologist at Southampton General Hospital, said: "Importantly, this result is comparable to that of the AEGIS phase III study (66% of patients with normalised Hb by 12 weeks) and supports the clinical effectiveness of Feraccru in real world clinical practice."

Shield Therapeutics said real-world studies often yield poorer results than clinical studies, which would make the results yet more impressive.

Feraccru is the company’s orally dosed non-salt ferric iron treatment, which is designed to avoid the treatment limiting factors associated with salt-based treatments such as nausea, bloating and constipation.

The only current treatment available for iron deficient patients who cannot tolerate salt-based oral iron therapies is IV iron therapy which are invasive, costly, inconvenient and complex to administer, and can result in potentially life-threatening, spontaneous hypersensitivity reactions

Silvia Lovato, clinical lecturer at London North West University, said: "We audited the first 28 patients who were prescribed ferric maltol and savings over 12 months were found to amount to £11,940 and 5 fewer days of nursing time compared to using IV iron. If we apply the same considerations to all 800 patients who received parenteral iron infusion in the Trust in the previous 12 months, the estimated savings with ferric maltol would have been £257,604 and 107.7 days of nurse time."

As of 1616 BST, Shield Therapeutics’ shares were up 2.60% at 39.50p.