Roche adds to the lung fibrosis disappointment

 Clinical success in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has been elusive, and Roche’s zinpentraxin alfa is the latest to fall by the wayside. The company today said it had discontinued the asset in IPF after the pivotal Starscape trial was stopped for futility, incurring a $400m write-off against the asset's acquired value. The next big hope in the disease is Fibrogen’s pamrevlumab, with the first late-stage data due this year. Since the last time Evaluate Vantage carried out this analysis, Boehringer has taken BI 1015550 into phase 3 following promising mid-stage data, while Pliant posted a phase 2a win; both projects have been linked with improvements in forced vital capacity, a measure of lung function. Roche did not show an increase in FVC in its phase 2 trial of zinpentraxin, but merely demonstrated slightly less decline than with placebo. The phase 2 study of pamrevlumab tells a similar story, which might not bode well for Fibrogen. Still, plenty of others are vying for this space, with a crowded mid-stage pipeline. Recent entrants include autotaxin inhibitors from Blade and Bridge Biotherapeutics, cudetaxestat and BBT-877 respectively; Boehringer returned rights to the latter amid toxicity concerns, however.

The late-stage IPF pipeline
Project	Company	Mechanism	Trial details
Zinpentraxin alfa (RG6354/ PRM-151)	Roche (ex Promedior)	Recombinant human serum amyloid P	Starscape stopped for futility Q4 2022
Pamrevlumab	Fibrogen	Anti-CTGF antibody	Zephyrus-1 data due mid-2023; Zephyrus-2 data due mid-2024
BI 1015550	Boehringer Ingelheim	Phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor	NCT05321069 ends Nov 2024
Tyvaso	United Therapeutics	Prostacyclin mimetic	Teton & Teton 2 end Jun 2025
Source: Evaluate Pharma & clinicaltrials.gov. https://www.evaluate.com/vantage/articles/news/snippets/roche-adds-lung-fibrosis-disappointment