Bimzelx sustains hidradenitis suppurativa control up to 2 years

Key takeaways:

• Over 86% of patients maintained at least a 75% improvement in their diseases over the span of 2 years.
• The proportion of patients with severe disease decreased from 87.4% to 20.4%.

New data showed that Bimzelx sustained disease control of hidradenitis suppurativa up to 2 years, UCB announced in a press release.

“As the first presentation of [Bimzelx (bimekizumab)] data this year, we are thrilled it demonstrates the durability of response in HS treatment,” Fiona du Monceau, MBA, executive vice president and head of patient evidence at UCB, said in the release. “Sustained flare control, maintenance of response and improvement across multiple measures of disease severity through 2 years show how bimekizumab can transform outcomes for people living with HS.”

Bimzelx is a monoclonal IgG1 antibody that selectively inhibits interleukin 17A and 17F. These new 2-year data are from the BE HEARD program, which consists of a pair of phase 3 trials and a long-term extension trial.

Patients who completed treatment at week 48 of the phase 3 trials were allowed to enroll in the extension trial to receive open-label Bimzelx 320 mg every 2 weeks or every 4 weeks depending on if they achieved a 90% or higher improvement in HS Clinical Response.

Out of the patients that reached this response at 1 year, 90% (332/369) maintained a 50% or higher improvement in HS Clinical Response, 86.9% (265/305) maintained 75% or higher improvement in HS Clinical Response and 86% (234/272) maintained a DLQI minimal clinically important difference at 2 years.

At baseline, 87.4% (486/556) of patients had severe disease, whereas only 12.6% had moderate and no patients had mild disease. After 2 years of treatment with Bimzelx, the group of patients with severe disease decreased to 20.4% (91/446), shifting the percentages of those with moderate and mild disease to 26.5% and 53.1%, respectively.

According to the press release, more detailed results of this extension trial, including the efficacy and safety of Bimzelx, will be presented later this year.