| RESEARCH NEWS
Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. announced that it has received marketing approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Ampyra™ (dalfampridine), an oral treatment to improve walking in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). This was demonstrated by an increase in walking speed. Ampyra demonstrated efficacy in people with all four major types of MS (relapsing remitting, secondary progressive, progressive relapsing and primary progressive). Ampyra can be used alone or with existing MS therapies, including immunomodulator drugs.
Ampyra, which was previously referred to as Fampridine-SR, is an extended release tablet formulation of dalfampridine (4-aminopyridine, 4-AP), which was previously called fampridine. The FDA granted Ampyra orphan drug status, which will provide seven years of market exclusivity for the drug. In addition, Acorda has several issued patents that cover the formulation and use of Ampyra.
Ampyra is administered as a 10 mg tablet twice daily, approximately 12 hours apart. The primary measure of efficacy in its two Phase 3 MS trials was walking speed (in feet per second) as measured by the Timed 25-foot Walk (T25FW), using a responder analysis. A responder was defined as a patient who showed faster walking speed for at least three visits out of a possible four during the double-blind period than the maximum speed achieved in the five non-double-blA significantly greater proportion of patients taking Ampyra 10 mg twice daily were responders compared to patients taking placebo, as measured by the T25FW (Trial 1: 34.8% vs. 8.3%; Trial 2: 42.9% vs. 9.3%). The increased response rate in the Ampyra group was observed across all four major types of MS. During the double-blind treatment period, a significantly greater proportion of patients taking Ampyra 10 mg twice daily had increases in walking speed of at least 10%, 20%, or 30% from baseline, compared to placebo. In both trials, the consistent improvements in walking speed were shown to be associated with improvements on a patient self-assessment of ambulatory disability, the 12-item Multiple Sclerosis Walking Scale (MSWS-12), for both drug and placebo treated patients. However, a drug-placebo difference was not established for that outcome measure.
