Astrazeneca wins Nice and beta-blocker deals but loses in Brilinta trial

It was two out of three for Astrazeneca on Tuesday as disappointment over the unsuccessful conclusion of a huge drug trial was offset by a win with the NHS drug regulator for one of its big cancer drugs and a licence deal for a beta-blocker medicine.

Dealing with the bad news first, Brilinta, which is already approved as a post-heartattack medicine, failed to meet the targeted results in a massive trial among patients suffering from symptomatic peripheral artery disease (PAD).

The trial was the largest cardiovascular trial ever, although the group of 13,885 patients in 28 countries did not find any benefit in Brilinta over widely-used antiplatelet medicine clopidogrel, and therefore did not meet the primary endpoint of the trial.

It was also announced on Tuesday that Astrazeneca and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) had agreed a price at which osimertinib, which is felt to be one of the company's most important cancer drugs, would be made available to UK patients with a certain type of lung cancer through the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF).

Osimertinib, which is branded Tagrisso and won European regulatory approval in February, is the first medicine to be made available through the CDF since it was reformed over the summer.

Under the revamped CDF, which says it will fund the use of drugs for a limited period to test if they meet Nice's NHS cost-effectiveness threshold, successful drugs will be added to Nice's list for NHS reimbursement while drugs that fail will be rejected.

“This is a really important announcement for us,” said Lisa Anson, president for AstraZeneca in the UK and Ireland. “Tagrisso is a critical medicine in the AstrZeneca portfolio and a breakthrough precision medicine. It is also important for lung cancer patients in the NHS as there is a significant unmet need in that population.”

And also on Tuesday, Astra agreed to licence out the US rights for branded and authorised generic Toprol-XL, a beta-blocker medicine for the control of hypertension, angina and heart failure to Aralez Pharmaceuticals.

Aralez will pay AstraZeneca $175m for the US rights to Toprol-XL tablets and will also pay up to $48m in milestone and sales-related payments, as well as mid-teen percentage royalties on sales, with AstraZeneca continuing to manufacture and supply Toprol-XL and the authorised generic medicine.