VIDEO: Unmet needs in anemia care

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For patients with non-dialysis CKD, the biggest unmet need is something that's easier to use than ESAs, okay? And more effective than oral iron therapies, which as I said may be relatively ineffective because of decreases in the ability to absorb oral iron in the inflammatory state. So it would be nice if we had more effective oral iron preparations than we do now. There have been some advances in terms of oral iron bioavailability, but again, this is still a work in progress, and still the most effective way to administer iron in patients who are inflamed and iron deficient is intravenously. And as I said, this is sometimes a very cumbersome process in terms of getting a patient to refer to an infusion center where they can get IV iron. But IV iron to treat the 50% of CKD patients who are in fact iron deficient is really the way to go because it addresses the underlying problem and may decrease the need for those patients to get an ESA and raise the hemoglobin before they get to a point where they're more symptomatic.

And as far as the ESAs are concerned, as I said before, this is something that can be a very significant logistical barrier for patients. They don't like the shots, they don't either like to self-inject, they don't like to come to a infusion center to get the injections which are all administered subcutaneously. And it'll be very, very nice in terms of meeting an unmet need to have an oral agent available for patients with non-dialysis CKD that replaces the injectable ESA therapy and is in fact safe, effective, and approved by the FDA, and we don't have that right now.