Conditions: Transfusion-dependent Hemachromatosis Thalassemia Major Sickle Cell Disease
Keywords: Thalassemia Iron Chelation
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 15
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This purpose of this study is to understand the differences between people who have a good response to deferasirox (exjade) compared to people who have a poor response to this medication when used for transfusion-dependent iron overload.

The hypothesis is that patients with poor responses have physiologic barriers to deferasirox that may include absorption, pharmacokinetics of drug metabolism, hepatic clearance and/or genetic factors.

Detailed description:
The purpose of this trial is to examine three potential mechanisms of inadequate response to Exjade® in patients with transfusion dependent iron overload including patients with thalassemia syndromes, sickle cell disease and bone marrow failure.

Hypothesis: Patients have physiologic barriers to adequately respond to deferasirox that may include absorption, pharmacokinetics of drug metabolism, hepatic clearance and/or genetic factors.

Study objectives Primary objective

* To evaluate three potential mechanisms for inadequate response to deferasirox in a small cohort of patients with hemoglobinopathies.
* Oral pharmacokinetics measured with Cmax and AUC following standard dose deferasirox.
* Hepatobiliary excretory function
* Accessibility of chelatable iron pool by deferoxamine challenge Secondary objective(s)
* To identify risk factors that can predict adequate response including demographics, disease status, presence and severity of liver disease, trough levels of deferasirox at outpatient visits and pharmacogenomics.
* To investigate usefulness of potential surrogate measures of response including serum deferasirox levels, Hepatobiliary Iminodiacetic Acid (HIDA)nuclear medicine scan to evaluate hepatic excretory function and urinary iron excretion by deferoxamine challenge.

This is an investigator-initiated, pilot-scale, open-label physiological assessment of patients who respond poorly to deferasirox compared with patients who respond well. We plan to study 2 groups of patients: a)10 patients who have demonstrated poor responses and b) 5 control patients with good responses as defined further in the protocol. The study has two parts.

Part I: Both groups of patients will have inpatient physiological assessments with a dose of 35mg/kg of deferasirox.

Part II: Inadequate responders eligible to continue on deferasirox will continue on a dose of 35 mg/kg for three months during which time serial pharmacokinetic levels will be studied. The control patients will resume their previous clinically appropriate dosing (likely less than 35 mg/kg) and for three months have serial pharmacokinetic levels drawn as well.

The study will begin with an outpatient screening visit when demographics and historical information as well as a physical examination will be obtained and reviewed for eligibility. At that visit patients will be able to sign informed consent. Shortly thereafter patients will be admitted to the GCRC at Children's Hospital Boston for part I of the study, a 2-3 day stay during which PK and nuclear medicine studies will be performed as well as the deferoxamine urinary iron excretion challenge. Patients who are eligible will continue on to part II of the study, and for 3 months and will be monitored for compliance, PK and ferritin changes on appropriate deferasirox doses.

Arms:
arm 1: All patients received the same interventions of deferoxamine challenge, deferasirox dose with pharmacokinetic monitoring and HIDA scan. Then we compared responses between patients who were known to be slow responders to deferasirox and those who were known to be rapid responders (chelated well).

Interventions: intervention 1: Deferoxamine intervention 2: Deferasirox intervention 3: HIDA
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: After a 3-day washout period from all chelation, all patients have a 12 hour infusion of 50mg/kg of deferoxamine with urine collection and pre and post blood sampling to assess iron and Total Iron Binding Capacity (TIBC) by atomic absorption. intervention 2: After a 3-day washout period from all chelation, patients had a desferal challenge which was followed by a single dose of deferasirox, 35mg/kg orally with blood sampling taken pre-deferasirox and at intervals for 24 hours after the dose. intervention 3: All patients had a HIDA scan to assess physiologic liver clearance capacity.

Protocol document: