Kamada Ltd. (NASDAQ:KMDA, TASE: KMDA.TA))), a global biopharmaceutical company with a portfolio of marketed products indicated for rare and serious conditions and a leader in the specialty plasma-derived therapies field, today highlighted results of an Investigator-Initiated Study recently presented at the 2026 International Society for Heart and Lung Transplant (ISHLT) annual meeting, held in Toronto, Canada. The study results were presented by Dr. Daniel Calabrese, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the UCSF Lung Transplant Program. The study is part of a comprehensive post-marketing research program aimed at generating key data in support of the benefits of CYTOGAM®, the Company’s Cytomegalovirus Immune Globulin (CMVIG), in the management of cytomegalovirus (CMV) in solid organ transplantation.

The translational and observational clinical study results were presented as three posters1,2,3. In a retrospective analysis of clinical data, researchers found that among CMV high-risk lung transplant recipients, patients who did not receive CMVIG prophylaxis experienced worse clinical outcomes compared with those who received CMVIG prophylaxis and other CMV serotype groups. A paired analysis of patient blood cells found less activated innate immune cells in the group that received CMVIG prophylaxis. These results build on a hypothesis that CMVIG may interrupt an injurious innate immune response against the allograft. In a non-clinical in-vivo model, researchers found that key innate immune cells were increased after acute lung injury and that CMVIG blunted lung injury and improved mortality. Together, these data underscore the clinical relevance of this high-risk population and the potential mechanistic and clinical roles of CMVIG as a targeted intervention.

Collectively, these data may shift the paradigm of how CMV in the lung transplant setting, where CMV carries risk of reactivation but also graft injury, is understood. The finding that CMVIG is associated with immune modulation, in addition to effects on CMV viremia alone, may also suggest additional benefit.  

The results presented by Dr. Calabrese are consistent with a prior Investigator-Initiated Study conducted by Fernando Torres, M.D., Clinical Chief, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and presented at IDWeek 2023. This five-year retrospective study consisted of 324 lung-transplant patients, evaluating the real-world use of CYTOGAM in combination with anti-viral agents for the prevention of CMV disease in high-risk CMV mismatch lung transplant recipients. The results demonstrated an association between a proactive multimodality CMV prophylaxis approach consisting of antivirals and immune augmentation with CMV immunoglobulin and improved outcomes among high-risk CMV mismatch lung transplant recipients.

"The findings recently presented by Dr. Calabrese add to a growing body of research highlighting the broader impact of CMV in transplant beyond viral replication and underscore the importance of continued investigation in high-risk populations, and we look forward to the full results of this work being published later this year," said Amir London, Kamada’s Chief Executive Officer. "We remain committed to supporting scientific advancement in this area and believe that the data generated by these studies and other studies planned in our post-marketing program will support increased product utilization for CYTOGAM."