AstraZeneca’s diabetes treatment has shown promise in a late-stage trial to help to slow chronic kidney disease, putting it on track for possible expanded approvals ahead of rival drugs.
The British drugmaker said on Tuesday that the treatment – Farxiga – which is used for the most common form of diabetes, helped to improve renal function or reduced the risk of death compared with a placebo in diabetic and non-diabetic patients in a study.
Diabetes is known to have knock-on effects for the heart and kidneys, prompting many drugmakers to test their diabetes treatments on conditions affecting these organs.
Farxiga is part of the SGLT2-inhibitor class of antidiabetics which also includes Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim’s Jardiance and Johnson & Johnson’s Invokana.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration put Jardiance up for a speedy review for a similar setting, but the drug has yet to receive approval. Farxiga was granted this status by the FDA last year.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a serious, progressive condition which affects nearly 700 million people worldwide, and has limited treatment options.
The positive data from AstraZeneca’s late-stage DAPA-CKD trial also comes nearly three months after U.S. regulators approved Farxiga as a medicine for heart failure in certain patients, regardless of their diabetes status.
Farxiga had sales of $1.54 billion (1.2 billion pounds) in 2019, making it among AstaZeneca’s top five treatments in terms of revenue.
The AstraZeneca trial also met all of its secondary goals, the company said.
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