Secukinumab Produces Effective Skin Clearance in Late-Stage Trials

Novartis’s experimental psoriasis drug, secukinumab, demonstrated sustained efficacy in its final late-stage trials, the manufacturer revealed at the 72^nd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) held in Denver, CO.

In a pair of phase 3 trials, psoriasis patients experienced almost clear skin at 12 weeks after receiving 300 mg of secukinumab, compared to their placebo counterparts. Additionally, the 300 mg dosage group showed clinically relevant improvements over the 150 mg participants in both the FEATURE and JUNCTURE studies.

The patients also had no qualms about self-administering the drug, according to their self-reports on the Self-Injection Assessment Questionnaire (SIAQ), which covers overall experience, feelings about injections, self-confidence, satisfaction with self-injection, injection-site reactions, ease of use, and self-image before and after treatment.

“It is important that people living with psoriasis, a chronic skin disease, have highly effective and safe treatments they can conveniently self-administer,” Tim Wright, Global Head of Development for Novartis, said in a press release. “These exciting results from our specialty dermatology portfolio show that secukinumab, the first interleukin-17A (IL-17A) inhibitor with regulatory submissions completed, had similar efficacy in clearing skin with a convenient pre-filled syringe and autoinjector pen as in the landmark FIXTURE study, where it was significantly superior to Enbrel, a biologic psoriasis therapy approved 10 years ago.”

Secukinumab’s efficacy was preserved over the full 1-year trial period, with the 300 mg patient group experiencing almost clear skin at the end of the study.

The most common side effects reported across all treatment groups were diarrhea, nasopharyngitis, headache, and pruritus.