Takeda adds one more late-stage treatment to its growing roster of celiac drugs
Whatever happens with Takeda’s determined campaign to tackle celiac disease from all sides, no one will ever be able to fault them for a lack of dedication to the cause.
This morning, the global player joined hands with Zedira and Dr. Falk Pharma GmbH on a Phase IIb celiac drug dubbed ZED1227/TAK-227, giving Takeda dibs on the big US market plus a string of countries outside Europe.
Takeda, though, is anything but a newcomer when it comes to fighting gluten intolerance, a food allergy that currently can only be treated with a strict diet that avoids all wheat, barley and rye. The company has inked a range of alliances to build up a pipeline of a well-advanced set of drugs for celiac.
While tolerance can vary widely, the most acutely afflicted can experience painful effects after consuming only trace amounts of gluten. And that can all lead to some serious chronic ailments.
This particular drug came out of Darmstadt-based Zedira, which bills ZED1227 as “the first direct-acting transglutaminase inhibitor in clinical development.”
Writing in the NEJM, researchers had celiac patients with a range of severities eat 3 mg of gluten in a biscuit daily for 6 weeks. And they concluded in the PoC study that all three doses were linked with lower mucosal damage typical of celiac.
The crew at Takeda has lined up multiple shots on its goal to treat celiac for the first time. In early 2020, they bought out little PvP Biologics in a $330 million-plus deal covering milestones and an upfront. That drug, TAK-062, is a protein designed to degrade gluten. Then there’s TAK-101: “a potential first-in-class, immune-modifying nanoparticle containing gliadin proteins designed to promote immune tolerance to gluten in celiac disease by preventing gliadin-specific T-cell activation.”
