Pessimism over cholesterol treatments
Print Edition
NEW ways of controlling cholesterol, including possibly directly injecting “good” HDL cholesterol into patients, need to be studied following the failure of promising treatments from Eli Lilly, Pfizer Inc and Roche Holding AG, according to top heart researchers.
Lilly in October halted a 12,000-patient study of its experimental drug evacetrapib, an oral medication that in smaller earlier studies slashed “bad” LDL cholesterol and doubled levels of HDL.
But improved cholesterol levels did not prevent heart attacks and strokes, diminishing hopes for the approach to treating heart disease — by raising HDL through blockage of a protein called CETP.
Roche in 2012 scrapped its own CETP inhibitor after it also failed to help patients. Pfizer’s similar drug was discontinued in 2006 after being linked to deaths in trials.
Although Merck & Co continues to develop its own CETP inhibitor in a 30,000-patient study expected to be completed next year, researchers yesterday said the failures of the Lilly, Roche and Pfizer drugs bode poorly for it.
“Merck’s drug is the fourth shot on goal for CETP inhibitors, but with disappointment or lack of success for the other agents you have to be pessimistic” about the class of drugs, said Dr Stephen Nicholls, deputy director of the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide, Australia.
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