Novartis Impresses Where Others Have Failed

There is some good news from the clinic today. Novartis reported data on LCZ696, a combination therapy for congestive heart failure, and the results have really grabbed a lot of attention. (The trial had been stopped early back in March, so the news was expected to be good). This is a combo of the angiotensin II antagonist valsartan and a neprilysin (neutral endopeptidase) inhibitor, AHU-377.
Compared to enalapril, the standard ACE inhibitor therapy for CHF, the Novartis combo lowered the risk of cardiovascular death by 20% and the risk of hospitalization by 21%, while having at least as good a safety profile as the generic ACE drug. Those are powerful arguments for the company to make, both to physicians and to insurance payers, so the future of the therapy, barring any sudden misfortunes, looks assured. There’s not a lot that you can do for people with congestive heart failure as it is, and this looks like a real advance.
As Matthew Herper mentions, though, this isn’t the first time that a similar combination has been tried in CHF. A few years ago, Bristol-Myers Squibb had a major failure with a single drug that inhibited both the ACE and neprilysin enzyme pathways, Vanlev (omapatrilat). That compound had a persistent problem with angioedema, as detailed here, and that led to its eventual rejection by the FDA on risk/benefit grounds, after a great deal of expensive Phase III work. Back in 2002, in the early days of this blog, I predicted that no ACE/endopeptidase combination would ever see the light of day again, which shows you how much I know about it. But I wasn’t alone, that’s for sure. It’s very interesting and surprising that LCZ696 has worked out as well as it has, and it’s a very worthwhile question to wonder what the difference could have been. Balance between the two pathways? Having an receptor antagonist on the ACE end rather than an enzyme inhibitor? Whatever it was, it seems to have done the trick.
The only question I have about the new combo is how it would compare to an ACE/diuretic combination, which (from what I know) is also a standard course of therapy for CHF patients. On the other hand, you’d expect that a diuretic might also be added to LCZ696 treatment – it was shown that it could be combined with omapatrilat, since they’re all different mechanisms.
And one other point – I always make this one in these kind of situations. I’m willing to bet that critics of the drug industry, who like to go on about “me-too” drugs and lazy industrial research efforts, would have had LCZ696 on the list of eye-rolling follow-up drugs (that is, if they’d been paying attention at all). I mean, the angiotensin pathway is thoroughly covered by existing drugs, and neprilysin/NEP has been targeted before, too (both by omapatrilat and by Pfizer’s so-called “female Viagra”, UK-414,495). But there’s an awful lot we don’t know about human medicine, folks.
Update: here’s a deep look at the IP and patent situation around the combo.
Update 2: and here’s a detailed exchange about the way the trial was conducted and the drug’s possible impact.