NEW YORK, Oct. 18, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT:ATNM) ("Actinium" or "the Company"), a biopharmaceutical Company developing innovative targeted payload immunotherapeutics for the treatment of advanced cancers, announced today that the Company’s lead asset, Iomab-B, has been granted orphan designation in the European Union (EU) by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Iomab-B is intended to be used, upon approval, in preparing patients with relapsed or refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) who are over the age of 55 for a bone marrow transplant (BMT), often referred to as a hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT). Iomab-B is currently in a 150 patient multicenter, pivotal Phase 3 trial that is being conducted in the United States.
“We are excited to have been granted orphan designation in the EU for Iomab-B, which comes in addition to the SME status Actinium was granted and orphan designation for Iomab-B in the U.S.,” stated Sandesh Seth, Executive Chairman of Actinium Pharmaceuticals. “We believe Iomab-B represents a potentially revolutionary therapy for relapsed or refractory AML patients who are over the age of 55 who could benefit from a bone marrow transplant, which is a drastically underserved patient population. With additional regulatory support for Iomab-B in the EU through orphan designation and SME status we hope to one day bring Iomab-B to the patients of the EU.”
The EMA grants orphan designation to rare diseases that are defined as life-threatening or chronically debilitating conditions that affect no more than 5 in 10,000 people in the EU. With an estimated 30 million people living in the EU this equates to approximately 250,000 people or less for each rare disease.
