Af­ter neb­u­liz­er flop, Verona touts in­ter­im PhII re­sults on an­oth­er ver­sion of its lead COPD drug

Chalk up a much-need­ed — if pre­lim­i­nary — win for Verona Phar­ma in its mul­ti-pronged ef­fort to tack­le COPD.

The Lon­don-based res­pi­ra­to­ry drug de­vel­op­er is re­port­ing that in­ter­im re­sults from the first part of its Phase II tri­al — show­ing that its dry pow­der in­haler for­mu­la­tion of en­sifen­trine helped pa­tients im­prove lung func­tion — look promis­ing enough to go ahead with part 2.

In the tri­al, 37 pa­tients with mod­er­ate-to-se­vere chron­ic ob­struc­tive pul­monary dis­ease were di­vid­ed in­to six groups: a place­bo arm, and five en­sifen­trine co­horts each re­ceiv­ing one out of five dif­fer­ent dosage strengths of the drug: 150 µg, 500 µg, 1500 µg, 3000 µg, or 6000 µg. Track­ing their re­spons­es to a sin­gle dose, in­ves­ti­ga­tors found peak forced ex­pi­ra­to­ry vol­ume in one sec­ond — or FEV1, a com­mon mea­sure of lung func­tion — “in­creased from base­line in a dose-de­pen­dent man­ner (rang­ing from 68 mL to 333 mL, p<0.05 dos­es 1500 µg and above).”

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