AstraZeneca-Amgen asthma drug hits 69% remission in esophageal disease trial

Oct 20 — Amgen and AstraZeneca said on Tuesday their asthma drug helped reduce ​swallowing difficulties and achieved disease remission in 69% of patients with a type of chronic inflammatory disorder of the ‌esophagus.

The result builds on August data, when AstraZeneca said the drug met the trial's ⁠main goals after 24 weeks ​of treatment by reducing esophageal ⁠inflammation and easing swallowing difficulties versus placebo.

• The drug Tezspire ‌is being studied in ‌patients with symptomatic and uncontrolled eosinophilic esophagitis, which causes ⁠swelling and irritation in the food ⁠pipe, making swallowing difficult and sometimes causing food to get stuck

• The monoclonal antibody blocks a protein called TSLP that drives the inflammatory pathway involved in both asthma and eosinophilic esophagitis

• About 65% on the 210 mg dose and 69% ‌of patients on the 420 mg dose ​of the drug achieved remission of inflammation at 24 weeks, compared with 3.5% of patients on placebo

• The companies said the benefits were maintained through 52 weeks, with 67.8% of patients on the 210 mg dose and 63.3% on the 420 mg dose achieving disease remission, compared with 5.4% on placebo

• ​Tezspire reduced swallowing-difficulty scores by 18.8 points at the 210 mg ‌dose and 22 ‌points at ⁠the 420 mg dose after 24 weeks, compared with a 14.7-point reduction with placebo

• The most commonly reported side effects were upper respiratory infections, headache and diarrhea

• The drug is already approved ‌in a number of ​countries as an add-on treatment for ‌severe asthma and competes ⁠with Sanofi ​and Regeneron's blockbuster drug Dupixent

(Reporting by Sahil Pandey in Bengaluru; Editing by ​Vijay Kishore)

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