On July 7, 2021 Citius Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("Citius" or the "Company") (Nasdaq: CTXR), a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development and commercialization of first-in-class critical care products with a focus on anti-infective products in adjunct cancer care, unique prescription products and stem cell therapy, reported a business update for the six-month period ended June 30, 2021 and reported on recent corporate developments (Press release, Citius Pharmaceuticals, JUL 7, 2021, View Source [SID1234584672]).
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Recent Highlights and Upcoming Milestones
On July 1, 2021, Citius reported that the independent DMC recommended continuation of the Phase 3 Mino-Lok pivotal superiority trial as planned with no modifications or safety concerns,
Citius expects to complete the Mino-Lok trial by the end of 2021 or early 2022, subject to continued easing of COVID-19 restrictions in the U.S.,
Citius plans to submit a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2022 following completion of its Phase 3 Mino-Lok trial, and
Subsequent to March 31, 2021, Citius issued 11.2 million shares of Citius common stock upon the exercise of warrants, for aggregate proceeds of $16.9 million during the quarter and a total of $127.6 million in financing activities during the first half of 2021.
"On July 1, 2021, we reported that the independent Data Monitoring Committee (DMC), following its third interim review, recommended continuing the Phase 3 trial for Mino-Lok without modification. This recommendation affirms that there is an important efficacy signal that merits moving forward with the trial, there are no safety concerns to warrant halting the trial, and that the full data set upon trial completion may support statistically significant superiority. Whether Mino-Lok demonstrates statistical superiority will only be known to us once the trial is finished and the data is unblinded. We view the recommendation of the DMC as a strong positive signal, and remain fully committed to completing the trial in a timely manner," stated Myron Holubiak, President and Chief Executive Officer of Citius.
"Mino-Lok trial patients represent an extremely ill population, which is challenging to enroll under the best of circumstances. Like many clinical trials conducted during the pandemic, the timeline for our study has been impacted by COVID-19. It has taken longer than anticipated to enroll patients due to restrictions established at our trial sites during the height of the pandemic. These restrictions, in place for close to half of the duration of our trial, reflect a series of challenges including: site closures, limited site and patient access, reallocation of resources away from clinical trials to COVID-patient treatment, modifications to catheter infection treatment protocols, and lengthy approval time to qualify new study sites, resulting in fewer monthly patient screenings compared to pre-pandemic levels. The ability of sites to ramp back up for the Mino-Lok trial depends largely on how these varied and complex factors are addressed. Several institutions have resumed our trial, and provided that COVID restrictions continue to ease and are not reinstated, we believe it would be possible for our trial sites to complete enrollment in the Mino-Lok study as early as the end of the year. That would put us on target to submit an NDA in 2022," added Mr. Holubiak.
"We intend to aggressively pursue all options to expedite completion of the Mino-Lok trial. During the first half of 2021, we raised more than $127 million, of which approximately $17 million was from warrants exercised since March 31, 2021. We intend to leverage these resources to accelerate our outreach efforts to advance the trial. Moreover, we believe we are well capitalized to advance Mino-Lok beyond trial completion, and will engage closely with the FDA in the coming months to do so. Concurrently, we are actively advancing three additional first-and-only or novel pipeline products as outlined in our updated corporate presentation published on our website this morning. With a late-stage product candidate moving toward completion of its Phase 3 trial, depth in our pipeline, and the financial resources to execute our near-term strategy, we believe Citius is better positioned than ever before to deliver long-term value to shareholders," concluded Mr. Holubiak.
About Mino-Lok
Citius is developing Mino-Lok, an antibiotic lock solution to treat patients with catheter-related blood stream infections that was licensed from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Citius believes Mino-Lok provides a superior alternative to removing and replacing a central venous catheter (CVC), leading to a reduction in serious adverse events and cost savings to the healthcare system. If approved, Mino-Lok would be the first-and-only FDA-approved treatment that salvages central venous catheters that cause central line-related blood stream infections.
The Mino-Lok Phase 3 pivotal superiority trial is a multi-center, randomized, open-label, blinded study to determine the efficacy and safety of Mino-Lok (MLT), a novel antibiotic lock therapy that combines minocycline with edetate disodium. The primary endpoint for this study is the time (in days following randomization) to a catheter failure event between randomization and TOC (Week 6) in the Intent-to-Treat (ITT) Population.
Approximately 144 subjects diagnosed with CRBSI/CLABSI and who meet all necessary criteria for the study are to be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive either Mino-Lok therapy or standard of care antibiotic lock therapy.
Subjects in the Mino-Lok arm receive one MLT dose daily with a dwell time of two to four hours for a total of seven doses. For subjects in the Control arm, the investigator determines the antibiotic used in the lock, dose, dwell time, and number of days of administration based on institutional standards or Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) guidelines.
Three planned interim analyses were performed as defined by the study protocol. The primary role of the independent DMC, defined in the DMC charter, is to safeguard the interests of study participants, assess the safety of the treatment, and monitor the overall conduct of the study. In order to ensure the protection of patients enrolled in the trial and to assure the timely and efficient completion of the study, each DMC recommendation is bound by strict parameters outlined in the DMC charter. A recommendation to continue the trial as planned indicates that the data reviewed by the DMC, at this juncture, is within the statistical boundaries determined by Citius in order to complete the trial with the protocol-defined sample size and power to achieve the primary endpoint.