Arthritis drug disappointment: will fostamatinib's failure force pharma back to the drawing board?

Recent news of fostamatinib’s latest failure to meet clinical endpoints marks yet another blow to an already weakened rheumatoid arthritis (RA) therapeutics pipeline, and may drive manufacturers to investigate fresh approaches to drug development, says an analyst with research and consulting firm GlobalData.

This latest disappointment marks the official demise of AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and Rigel Pharmaceuticals’ (Nasdaq: RIGL) troubled Phase III program for fostamatinib (entitled OSKIRA; The Pharma Letter June 4), and comes not long after Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) shelving of its RA candidate, tabalumab (TPL February 8).

“These recent events clearly show that the path to regulatory approval in RA remains a challenging one for both novel small molecules and biologics,” says Dina Rufo, immunology analyst with GlobalData. “Considering these setbacks in the RA pipeline, we believe companies with RA therapies in early development are likely to be watching closely, and may need to reconsider their own clinical development programs in hope that they can bring their drugs to the market,” she said.