As­traZeneca's star res­pi­ra­to­ry drug runs in­to an­oth­er wall with COPD, but it's not giv­ing up — yet

As­traZeneca’s at­tempt to push its res­pi­ra­to­ry bi­o­log­ic Fasen­ra (ben­ral­izum­ab) in­to the chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease field has been foiled by a Phase III flop.

In the 56-week mul­ti-cen­ter tri­al, Fasen­ra failed to spur a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion of ex­ac­er­ba­tions in pa­tients with mod­er­ate to very se­vere COPD, the pri­ma­ry end­point, com­pared to place­bo.

Cur­rent­ly ap­proved as an add-on treat­ment for se­vere eosinophilic asth­ma in the US, EU, Japan and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries, Fasen­ra was billed as a block­buster in the mak­ing, with CEO Pas­cal So­ri­ot es­ti­mat­ing peak sales po­ten­tial at $2 bil­lion (Jef­feries an­a­lysts gave it a more mod­est $1.5 bil­lion).

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