AstraZeneca drug fails to meet objective

A phase IIb study on AstraZeneca rheumatoid arthritis drug fostamatinib failed to meet one of its primary objectives.

OSKIRA-4 was a six month study evaluating improvements in signs and symptoms of RA in 280 patients who had never previously used a disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD), were DMARD intolerant or had an inadequate response to DMARDs and were randomised to receive fostamatinib as a monotherapy, adalimumab as a monotherapy, or placebo.

Three dose regimens of fostamatinib were evaluated in OSKIRA-4: 100mg twice daily, 100mg twice daily for a month followed by 150mg once daily, and 100mg twice daily for a month followed by 100mg once daily.

OSKIRA-4 had two primary objectives - a superiority comparison to placebo at six weeks and a non-inferiority analysis against adalimumab monotherapy at 24 weeks as measured by change from baseline in DAS28 score (a composite endpoint assessing signs and symptoms of RA).

In the OSKIRA-4 study, fostamatinib as a monotherapy met the first primary objective, showing a statistically significant superior DAS28 score change from baseline compared to placebo at six weeks at the 100mg twice daily dose and the 100mg twice daily for a month followed by 150mg once daily dose, but not at the 100mg twice daily for a month followed by 100mg once daily dose.

The OSKIRA-4 study did not meet its second primary objective as all fostamatinib monotherapy doses were inferior to adalimumab monotherapy at week 24 based on DAS28.

The safety and tolerability findings for fostamatinib as reported in the OSKIRA-4 study were generally consistent with those previously observed in the TASKi Phase II programme.

At 3:26pm: (LON:AZN) AstraZeneca share price was -89.25p at 2953.25p

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