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Novartis abandons asthma drug after Phase 3 trial results

pharmafile | December 17, 2019 | News story | Manufacturing and Production Novartis, Novartis. R&D, asthma, novartis r&d 

Novartis have said it is not going forward with a new asthma drug, as the treatement failed its Phase 3 trials.

The company announced that the drug, called fevipiprant, did not meet its clinically relevant threshold for reduction in rates of moderate-to-severe exacerbation compared to placebo, for either of the doses, when evaluated over a treatment period of one year.

This follows the results of another failed Phase 3 trial of fevipiprant, a few weeks back, in patients with mild-to-moderate asthma.

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John Tsai, head of drug development at Novartis, said: “While the results of the studies with fevipiprant are disappointing, they meaningfully contribute to our understanding of the DP2 pathway in asthma.”

The company did hope that fevivprant would be an extremely profitable new drug, and Novartis envisioned it as addressing a gap in the market for those with severe asthma. They believed the drug could have generated $1.5 billion in revenue a year.

Asthma is a condition experienced by millions across the world. 5.4million people in the UK currently receive treatment for it which costs the NHS around £1 billion per year. About 1,484 died from asthma attacks in the UK in 2017. In America, 25 million people suffer from the condition.

Conor Kavanagh

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