Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

A new mechanism of action to attack in the treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD), Novartis developed Ilaris (canakinumab), a human monoclonal antibody targeting the interleukin-1beta innate immunity pathway

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Speaking at an ESC press briefing, Ridker said, “This is what personalized predictive medicine is all about.” Once a patient has experienced an MI, there is always residual risk of recurrence. Thus, he suggested that residual risk can be divided into

• residual lipid-driven risk and
• residual inflammatory-driven risk.

canakinumab might prove to be most useful if it were given to an identified high-responder group. Findings in the hs-CRP responders:

Patients whose hs-CRP declined to 1.8 mg/L or less had a much more robust response. In that subgroup, the number needed to treat to prevent a primary endpoint event was 50 at 2 years and 30 at 3.7 years.

He noted that after a single injection responders have a significant reduction in highly sensitive-CRP and it is those patients who would benefit from continuing on treatment.

“Maybe that first dose could be free,” Ridker added.

Co-investigator, Peter Libby, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, put it this way: 30 days after an MI, when a patient is on statin therapy and stable,

• physicians could check LDL and then initiate more aggressive statin therapy if it is not well-controlled. Similarly,
• physicians should check hs-CRP, and if it is elevated — 2.0 mg/L or higher — initiating anti-inflammatory therapy targeting interleukin-1 beta would be an option

Interestingly, the treatment had no effect on lipids, which suggests that the benefit was all attributable to the anti-inflammatory activity. 

In the Canakinumab Anti-inflammatory Thrombosis Outcomes Study (CANTOS), 150 mg of canakinumab every 3 months reduced high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels by an average of 37% compared with placebo and achieved a 15% reduction in cardiovascular events — mostly MIs — compared with placebo, Paul Ridker, MD, reported here at the European Society of Cardiology 2017 congress.

The CANTOS findings were simultaneously published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

After a median follow-up of 3.7 years, the event rate was 4.5 per 100 person-years in the placebo group versus 3.86 events per 100 person-years in the canakinumab 150 mg group. Two other arms — canakinumab 50 mg and 300 mg — also achieved reductions in events (4.11 and 3.90 per 100 person-years, respectively) but only the 150-mg dose achieved a statistically significant reduction.

There was no reduction in mortality. The trial recruited patients who had a history of MI and a hs-CRP level of 2.0 mg/L or higher.

• There was no significant difference in all-cause mortality (HR for all canakinumab doses versus placebo, 0.94; 95% CI 0.83-1.06; P=0.31).

Benefits of Anti-inflammatory Canakinumab

although there was no cardiovascular mortality benefit, there was 30% reduction in need for bypass surgery, angioplasty, and heart failure — all of which means a significant improvement in quality of life. And treatment was also associated with a reduction in gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoarthritis, he said.

Cancer Benefit

There was an apparent decrease in risk of cancer, a finding that was elucidated in a Lancet paper also published today. In the cancer analysis, also authored by Ridker, total cancer mortality was lower only in the 300-mg group, but “[i]ncident lung cancer (n=129) was significantly less frequent in the 150 mg (HR 0.61 [95% CI 0.39–0.97]; P=0.034) and 300 mg groups (HR 0.33 [95% CI 0.18–0.59] P<0.0001.”

Negative findings

• Canakinumab was associated with a higher incidence of fatal infection than placebo — the rate was 0.18 in the 3,344 patient placebo group versus 0.32 among the 6,717 patients who received any dose of the drug, which worked out to 23 deaths versus 78 deaths (P=0.02).

• VIEW VIDEO

Study Author Paul M. Ridker. Interviewed by Peggy Peck, Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/esc/67529

• VIEW VIDEO

SOURCE

https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/esc/67529

176 articles on monoclonal antibody

https://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/?s=monoclonal+antibody