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Speaker: Drug development for lupus presents opportunity, reason for optimism

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DESTIN, Fla. — Despite the challenges of drug development for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus, there are reasons for optimism about the future, according to a speaker at the Congress of Clinical Rheumatology Annual Meeting.

“It has not all been about failure. We have had some success. There have been four – BLISS-52, BLISS-76, belimumab subcutaneous study and the maintenance trial of [Aspreva Lupus Management Study] ALMS,” Richard Alan Furie, MD, said, here.

Richard Alan Furie

Furie said there are reasons to be optimistic about the future of the drug development and new therapeutic options for lupus. More efficient trial designs, increased effect size, having multiple drug targets and more clinically meaningful endpoints, such as low disease activity, a major clinical response or even a remission, will be beneficial in drug development for lupus treatment. He also said rheumatologists need to start looking at durability of the drug effect and confirmation.

“We will have many more medicines,” Furie said. “My prediction is that the next drug in lupus to be approved will be anifrolumab. That is assuming the phase 3 data reproduce the phase 2 data. For lupus nephritis, I am not sure and it is many years off probably,” he said.

Biomarkers and molecular profiling are also needed, he said. Patients in lupus studies are generally all-comers, he said.

“We need to do more than just clinical phenotypes, and I think [that] will lead to individualized therapy and we will have better outcomes. We have come a long way in the last 50 years with lupus, but we have a way to go,” Furie said.

“As much as [we] integrate science and technology into the care of our patients, taking care of lupus patients is an art,” he said. – by Kristine Houck, MA, ELS

Reference:

Furie RA. Emerging systemic lupus erythematosus treatments: Development of targeted therapies. Presented at: Congress of Clinical Rheumatology; April 27-20, 2017; Destin, Fla.

Disclosure: Furie reports relationships with Genentech/Roche, GlaxoSmithKline, Celgene, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Medimmune/AstraZeneca, Biogenidec, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Anthera, Novartis, UCB, Eisai and Mallinckrodt.