Hancock Jaffe Laboratories recently announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the company’s Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) application to begin the US pivotal trial for the VenoValve. The VenoValve is an implantable valve designed to restore proper directional blood flow for patients with chronic venous insufficiency (CVI) of the deep veins of the leg.
“We are delighted that the FDA has approved our IDE application to begin the VenoValve pivotal trial, which should allow us to begin to gather the clinical data necessary to demonstrate that the VenoValve is a safe and effective treatment for patients with deep venous CVI,” said Hancock Jaffe CEO Robert Berman. “This approval brings us one step closer to achieving our goal of establishing a new standard of care with the VenoValve for the millions of patients suffering from the debilitating effects of CVI who have no effective treatment options today.”
The SAVVE (Surgical anti-reflux venous valve endoprosthesis) trial is a prospective, non-blinded, single-arm, multicentre study of 75 CVI patients to be enrolled at up to 20 US centres. The trial’s primary effectiveness endpoint is a reduction in reflux at six months, and the primary safety endpoint is the absence of a major adverse event (MAE), defined as mortality, deep wound infection, major bleeding, ipsilateral deep vein thrombosis, or pulmonary embolism, at 30 days post-implantation. Secondary endpoints include disease manifestations (revised Venous Clinical Severity Score [rVCSS]), pain perception (visual analogue scale [VAS]), ulcer healing and recurrence, quality of life, and the absence of MAEs throughout the study. The FDA has recommended that the company provide one year safety and effectiveness data from the pivotal trial to support a pre-marketing authorisation (PMA) application for commercialisation. Patients enrolled in the SAVVE trial will be followed for a period of five years.
These are the same endpoints that Hancock Jaffe used for its successful VenoValve first-in-human trial. One-year results from this trial, released in December 2020, demonstrated that patients treated with VenoValve experienced significant improvement in all study endpoints, and the device showed a good safety profile. Interim results from the study were recently published online in the Journal of Vascular Surgery.
Hancock Jaffe has begun to qualify sites that have expressed interest in participating in the SAVVE study. The company will immediately begin to fulfil conditions for study initiation outlined by the FDA and seek Institutional Review Board (IRB) and other necessary approvals from potential SAVVE sites. The company expects sites to join the SAVVE study on a rolling basis following receipt of the necessary site approvals and documentation and appropriate site training. The company expects to begin patient enrolment in the third quarter of 2021 and will provide periodic updates.
