AstraZeneca drug evaluated in nine eosinophilic diseases
pharmafile | April 23, 2021 | News story | Medical Communications | AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca announced on Thursday that the first patients had been dosed in the Phase III Fasenra (benralizumab) clinical trial in bullous pemphigoid (BP), and in two Phase II trials in atopic dermatitis (AD) and chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), bringing the total of clinical trials into the drug up to ten.
BP, AD, and CSU are all skin diseases that are associated with a range of debilitating symptoms that pose a significant medical burden to patients and often negatively impact their quality of life.
Mene Pangalos, Executive Vice President of BioPharmaceuticals R&D, said: “Bullous pemphigoid, atopic dermatitis, and chronic spontaneous urticaria continue to represent a significant burden to millions of people worldwide. These trials may provide future treatment options as we follow the science to better understand the role of eosinophils in these often debilitating skin diseases.
“This progress is yet another important step towards our ambition to bring Fasenra to patients beyond severe asthma, through our extensive clinical programme covering a broad range of dermatological, gastrointestinal and systemic inflammatory illnesses.”
Fasenra has been used previously to treat severe asthma in patients whose disease may be driven by eosinophilic immune dysfunction (EID).
EID is observed across a spectrum of conditions and is characterised by the dysregulation of biological mechanisms involved with eosinophil recruitment and activation that enable eosinophils to infiltrate patients’ blood and tissue to cause and worsen disease in a range of tissues and organ systems throughout the body. Conditions in which EID is observed have complex pathogenic mechanisms which include eosinophil-mediated organ damage and dysfunction.
Fasenra is a monoclonal antibody that binds directly to IL-5 receptor alpha on eosinophils and attracts natural killer cells to induce rapid and near-complete depletion of blood and tissue eosinophils in most patients via apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Fasenra is currently approved as an add-on maintenance treatment for severe eosinophilic asthma in the US, EU, Japan and other countries, and is now in development for other eosinophilic diseases and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The US Food and Drug Administration granted Orphan Drug Designation for Fasenra for eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (November 2018), hypereosinophilic syndrome (February 2019), and eosinophilic esophagitis (August 2019).
Kat Jenkins
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