Arpida files iclaprim in Canada
This article was originally published in Scrip
Executive Summary
Arpidahas filed its lead product, the intravenous antibiotic iclaprim, for approval in Canada. The filing is for the treatment of complicated skin and skin structure infection (cSSSI) and includes data from the ASSIST-1 and ASSIST-2 Phase III trials, which showed iclaprim was non-inferior to Pfizer's Zyvox (linezolid) for cSSSI in a group of patients with a high incidence of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Iclaprim is a synthetic diaminopyrimidine and Arpida has said it believes the compound may have benefits over Zyvox, an oxazolidinone antibiotic which can cause myelosuppression. The company filed for approval of iclaprim in the US in March and in the EU in July (Scrip Online, March 20th, 2008 and Scrip Online, July 29th, 2008, respectively).