News
New COPD pill "Daxas" improves lung function, lowers exacerbations in clinical trials, says medical journal
LONDON (Reuters) – An experimental once-daily tablet from Nycomed and Forest Laboratories improves lung function in people with “smoker’s lung” and may be a useful add-on to conventional inhaled drugs, experts said on Friday.
Privately owned Swiss drugmaker Nycomed, which is working towards a multibillion-dollar flotation, hopes Daxas will reach the market in 2010 and believes it has blockbuster potential.
It signed a deal earlier this month with Forest, giving the U.S. group rights to sell the drug in the United States as a treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Some analysts, however, have been wary of prospects for Daxas, given its troubled history and the failure of other drugs that work in a similar way, by inhibiting a enzyme called PDE4 linked to inflammation.
When used on its own, Daxas reduced exacerbations, or COPD attacks, that required medical intervention by 17 percent per patient per year compared with a placebo, according to results of two Phase III trial reported in the Lancet medical journal.
The drug, known generically as roflumilast, also increased by 48 millilitres the volume of air that patients would breath out in one second, a measure known as FEV1.
