An experimental rheumatoid pill that is produced by AstraZeneca’s called fostamatinib only managed to meet one of its two goals in a late-stage clinical trial. This has left the future of one of the group’s few advanced pipeline products uncertain.
Fostamatinib had been touted as a potential competitor to injectable drugs like AbbVie’s Humira and a new pill from the company Pfizer that’s called Xeljanz. The market is thought to be worth a staggering $20 billion-plus. Disappointing results from the tests, however, mean that investor hopes for the medicine are now low.
The latest findings will do little to quell the worries, especially as increased blood pressure and diarrhoea were found to be worrying side effects of AstraZeneca product. Results of another AstraZeneca-funded study found that fostamatinib was actually inferior to Humira in controlling the symptoms of arthritis – suggestion that the drug could be a waste of time.
In the new trial, AstraZeneca’s recent drug achieved a significant improvement at the 24 week mark, when compared to placebo. The test assessed signs and symptoms of the disease – the so-called ACR20 response rate. However, it sadly failed to show an improvement in an X-ray test measuring the progression of joint damage.
The side effects that were seen in patients taking the drug were similar to those that were recorded in the results of earlier studies, including hypertension, diarrhoea, nausea, headache and common cold.
This is bad news for the company financially too. Given the doubts surrounding the product, forecasts among the AstraZeneca analysts for fostamatinib sales are now quite low, averaging just $171 million in 2016. Humira, on the other hand, has annual worldwide sales of around $9 billion.
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