By Denise Roland 

Novartis AG said it was abandoning a potential blockbuster drug in asthma after it failed two late stage-trials, dealing a blow to the company's hopes of pioneering a novel way to treat the respiratory disease.

The Swiss health-care giant said the experimental treatment, called fevipiprant, performed no better than a placebo in reducing exacerbations -- episodes where symptoms suddenly worsen -- in two large trials on patients with moderate to severe asthma.

Novartis is pivoting toward high-value branded drugs and away from over-the-counter treatments and generic drugs under Chief Executive Vasant Narasimhan. However, while these products yield higher profits, risk of failure is also greater.

The company had recently highlighted fevipiprant as one of its promising new drugs, with plans to submit it to regulators next year if the trials were successful.

Novartis hoped fevipiprant would address a gap in treatment options for patients with severe asthma. Most can keep their symptoms under control using inhaled drugs alone but it is more difficult for those with severe asthma. A new wave of injectable treatments, including Novartis's own Xolair, have proved effective but 10%-20% of people with severe forms of the disease don't respond to the injections and need fresh alternatives.

Filling that gap could have generated around $1.5 billion a year in sales for Novartis, according to analysts at Jefferies.

"While the results of the...studies with fevipiprant are disappointing, they meaningfully contribute to our understanding" of the underlying biology, said John Tsai, head of drug development at Novartis.

The disappointing results come a few weeks after Novartis announced fevipiprant was unsuccessful in patients with mild-to-moderate asthma. Analysts had hoped the drug would nonetheless work in patients with more severe forms of the disease. Andrew Baum, an analyst at Citigroup, called the news an "unwelcome surprise" in a note to clients.

Novartis isn't heavily dependent on fevipiprant for revenue, however. It told analysts at a recent event that it believes it has around two dozen potential blockbusters -- drugs that could make more than $1 billion revenue a year -- in its pipeline.

Write to Denise Roland at Denise.Roland@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 16, 2019 06:55 ET (11:55 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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