VIENNA-- May 14, 2023 -- AOP Health announced new results on ropeginterferon alfa-2b (BESREMi) from its clinical study CONTINUATION-PV in patients with polycythaemia vera (PV), a rare blood cancer. Professor Heinz Gisslinger from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria[1] reported the findings in an abstract accepted for presentation at the prestigious EHA (European Hematology Association) 2023 Annual Meeting.

Reducing the risk of thrombotic events is an important goal in the treatment of PV
The abstract accepted for presentation at the EHA 2023 Annual Meeting focused on the proportion of time individual patients spent with peripheral blood cells counts meeting the targets recommended to minimize thrombotic complications. This longitudinal analysis - an emerging method to assess thrombotic risk in PV - takes fluctuations of response over long-term treatment into account, which are not detectable in conventional analyses evaluating only a few distinct time points.

Professor Heinz Gisslinger from Vienna, first author of the paper stated that: “Results from the CONTINUATION-PV study have deepened our understanding of the benefits of long-term treatment with ropeginterferon alfa-2b, one of the few new treatments to become available for patients with PV in previous decades. This analysis demonstrates previously unknown differences between hematologic responses to ropeginterferon alfa-2b and best available treatment, which impact individual thrombotic risk.”

[1] From snapshot to continuum: cumulative time in response as an emerging proxy for thrombotic risk in polycythaemia vera. Heinz Gisslinger, Christoph Klade, Pencho Georgiev, Dorota Krochmalczyk, Liana Gercheva-Kyuchukova, Miklos Egyed, Petr Dulicek, Arpad Illes, Halyna Pylypenko, Lylia Sivcheva, Jiří Mayer, Vera Yablokova, Kurt Krejcy, Victoria Empson, Hans C. Hasselbalch, Robert Kralovics, and Jean-Jacques Kiladjian for the PROUD-PV Study Group, European Haematology Association EHA, 28th Annual Meeting June 2023