SD Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Diarrhea is a relatively common complication in patients with cancer. At its inception, several mechanisms participated; malabsorption on the basis of mucositis induced by chemotherapy, dysbiosis induced by broad-spectrum antibiotics and predisposition to infectious diarrhea in immunocompromised patients. Some cytostatics and their metabolites can also induce diarrhea directly due to effect on the intestinal mucosa.
Use of probiotics in prevention and treatment of diarrhea relies on both the theoretical assumptions and the results of several clinical trials. Lactic acid bacteria involved in the treatment of dysbiosis, compete for substrate with pathogenic bacteria, produce bacterio-cins, increase transepithelial resistance. Their enzymatic activity affects activation or deactivation of metabolites which cause diarrhea. Production of short chain fatty acids, which are important for the maintenance of intestinal mucosal cells also contributes to their antidiarrhoeal effect.
This randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, multicentre trial was designed to evaluate potential of probiotics to prevent grade 3-4 diarrhea in patients treated by irinotecan based chemotherapy during first 6 weeks of irinotecan based chemotherapy

Febrile neutropenia (FN) is a major life-threatening treatment complication in cancer patients undergoing intensive chemotherapy. Endogenous flora is considered to be one of the main sources of infections during neutropenia. Competitive inhibition of gut mucosal colonization by pathogenic microorganisms using synbiotics could represent one of the potential options for its prevention. Synbiotics represent combination of two components: probiotics and prebiotics. Probiotics are live microorganisms, which in form of drugs or food supplements administered at a sufficient dose help to maintain health beneficial microbial balance in the digestive tract of a human or other host. Prebiotics are food ingredients nondigestible for our digestive enzymes, but can be fermented by bacteria in our bowel and this way selectively stimulate growth or activity of specific saccharolytic bacterial strains. These changes in composition of our microflora may bring benefits on host well-being and health. Based on the results of human and animal studies, probiotics probably can not only decrease the level of gut colonisation with pathogenic bacteria, but may also lead to reduction in the duration of neutropenia, accelerate the restitution of the intestinal mucosa and boost immunity. Despite a significant number of studies on probiotics still only little evidence of their safety especially in immunocompromised patients is available.
To help find new options for increasing quality of healthcare for children cancer patients and also to evaluate safety of this new approach investigators designed double-blinded placebo controled multicenter study aimed to decrease the number of febrile episodes using prevention with synbiotic.