AstraZeneca’s diabetes drug Xigduo launched in UK

11 March 2014

Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN)’s type 2 diabetes drug Xigduo (dapagliflozin and metformin hydrochloride) is now available in the UK.

Xigduo is a twice daily tablet that combines Forxiga (dapagliflozin), a selective and reversible inhibitor of SGLT2, with metformin hydrochloride (HCI) and is the first fixed-dose combination of its kind to be available in the UK. It was developed with AstraZeneca’s former partner Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) but the firm acquired the whole of B-MS’ diabetes alliance in a $4.1 billion deal in December.

Xigduo is now available for use on NHS England and NHS Wales, because the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and All Wales Medicines Strategy Group (AWMSG) have decided not to appraise it on the basis that existing guidance for dapagliflozin already covers all patients for whom Xigduo would be clinically appropriate. AstraZeneca will submit Xigduo for an abbreviated appraisal by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC).

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