AstraZeneca blood thinner Brilinta is no better than aspirin, the company announced on Wednesday.
The news came after the results of the so-called SOCRATES trial for the drug were released.
Experts found that although Brilinta caused fewer stroke patients to suffer from another stroke, heart attack or death after 90 days of the initial stroke, the results did not show statistical significance when compared to the current standard of care, which is aspirin. The trial involved administering 90 milligrams of Brilinta two times a day and 100 milligrams of aspirin once per day.
The British drug manufacturer had hoped the trial would pave the way for more uses of Brilinta, but that certainly was not the case. In fact, it made the drug appear ineffective, at least for now. Some analysts were also looking forward to positive results especially because Sanofi's Plavix had already exhibited limited benefits for strokes, making Brilinta the more potent option.
Major Setback For AstraZeneca's Sales
The results of the clinical trial took a major blow on AstraZeneca's expectations that Brilinta will lift the company to an annual sales of $3.5 billion by the year 2023. Such expectation is a huge part of the company's road to a $45 billion revenue target, announced as defense against Pfizer's takeover threat in 2014.
"It's a setback but at this stage we are not providing any new guidance on the overall ($3.5 billion) number," says AstraZeneca's Ludovic Helfgott.
In 2015, the sales of Brilinta reached $619 million. If the trials yielded a positive result, Thomson Reuters Cortellis predicts that the sales of the drug may reach an annual rate of $1.87 billion for 2020.
Staying Optimistic Despite Negative Trial Results
Despite the negative trial findings, it is worthy to note that Brilinta did not exhibit any safety hazards that may have caused doctors prescribing the drug to go into a panic.
With this, the company is staying optimistic as Helfgott, who is the head of the Brilinta franchise, says there are many other potential means for Brilinta's growth. The company is actually making huge investments in large clinical studies involving about 80,000 patients to look for other uses of Brilinta aside from its previously approved indication. For example, the drug has already showed positive effects on patients who have a history of heart attack and not just on those who had an attack during the previous year.
The company is also testing the medicine for diabetes and peripheral arterial disease, which is a condition that involves narrowing of blood vessels resulting in impeded circulation in the limbs. The results of these clinical trials are expected to be released in the latter part of 2016 and in the first half of 2017 respectively.
AstraZeneca's Elisabeth Bjork says the SOCRATES results do not affect the rest of the project at all. The company is still very excited about the possibilities with Brilinta.
The complete results of the SOCRATES trial will be presented at the European Stroke Organization meeting in Barcelona, Spain on May 10 to 12.
