In 2012, Roche halted development of their CETP inhibitor dalcetrapib, part of what (so far) has been a grim chapter in cardiovascular drug development. At the time, this was put down to lack of efficacy, rather than the bad effects seen with Pfizer’s torcetrapib, news that did nothing to cheer up the CETP research community.
Now DalCor (of Montreal) has licensed the compound, and is planning to go back into the clinic. What makes them think that they’ll have any better time of it? The plan is to restrict the clinical trial (and the eventual patient population) to a group that appears to be genetically predisposed to respond. An analysis of the trial data suggests that polymorphisms in the ADCY9 gene (adenylate cyclase 9) could account for large variations in the effects of dalcetrapib. DalCor and the Montreal Heart Institute plan to screen about 30,000 potential patients to find enough of them with the right profile.
What’s not clear to me is how many potential patients (and customers) this polymorphism leaves you with. DalCor has apparently run the numbers, and believes that there’s potential here but (naturally) this also all depends on that analysis from the previous trials being solid. Dalcetrapib will never be the blockbuster that Roche hoped for some years ago, but just turning it into a drug at all would (by this point) make for quite a story.
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Defibrillating Dalcetrapib
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