Roche Holding said it stopped work on one of its obesity-drug candidates, after clinical-trial data suggested the medicine wouldn't hit internal targets.
The Swiss drugmaker said it returned rights to the medicine, emugrobart, to its majority-owned business Chugai Pharmaceutical, which originally discovered the drug and licensed it to Roche.
"We have made the decision to discontinue development," Roche's pharmaceuticals chief executive, Teresa Graham, said at an event with investors in London on Monday. "We are returning that molecule to Chugai, and Chugai is looking to further development in [spinal muscular atrophy] as well as considering potential outlicensing opportunities."
Roche had previously estimated the drug had potential to reach annual peak sales of between 1 billion and 2 billion Swiss francs ($1.21 billion-$2.41 billion). The company is also developing two obesity injections and a pill, and sees potential for each of them to exceed 3 billion francs in peak sales.
Earlier this year, Roche also halted development on emugrobart for spinal muscular atrophy and facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, two rare genetic conditions that can cause muscle weakness.
Chugai separately said an interim analysis of data from a midstage study indicated clinically meaningful weight loss was unlikely to be achieved. The trial evaluated emugrobart in combination with another medicine in patients with obesity or who were overweight.
The Japanese company said it plans to move several obesity drug candidates into clinical trials over the next few years.
Chugai said it plans to resume development of emugrobart in spinal muscular atrophy, given that it saw a path to launch a late-stage trial based on an analysis of data from earlier trials. The obesity study showed emugrobart was well tolerated and there were no new safety signals, the company added.
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