The FDA rejected Zealand Pharma’s short bowel syndrome drug, and asked the company to run another trial before it reconsiders.
The FDA told Zealand it wanted an additional test to “provide further evidence to confirm the efficacy and safety of glepaglutide at the to-be-marketed dose,” the company said Thursday when it announced the rejection.
“While we are certainly disappointed in the FDA’s decision, we remain confident that the data showed robust and compelling evidence of both efficacy and safety for glepaglutide treatment,” Zealand’s chief medical officer David Kendall said in a statement. “We remain firm in our belief that glepaglutide provides a significant advance in GLP-2-based therapies for the potential treatment of SBS patients who are dependent on parenteral support.”
The company’s submission to the FDA for glepaglutide, a long-acting GLP-2 analog, included a single, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 3 registration trial, which is common for a rare disease such as SBS. The trial consisted of two active treatment arms: a once-weekly and twice-weekly dosing arm, respectively.
It showed that treatment with glepaglutide twice weekly demonstrated significant and superior effects in reducing parenteral support requirements in patients with SBS with intestinal failure compared to placebo. Patients who received glepaglutide once weekly resulted in a reduction in parenteral support, but the study did not achieve statistical significance.
Zealand had developed the drug to treat short bowel syndrome, a condition in which small intestine dysfunction limits someone’s ability to properly absorb nutrients from food. An
estimated
10,000 to 20,000 people in the US have the condition, according to the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation.
Glepaglutide has been in development for years, though it’s Zealand’s obesity pipeline that has become the apple of investors’ eyes. When the Danish company went public on Wall Street in 2017, glepaglutide was one of the mid-stage assets garnering attention. Jefferies analysts previously predicted $600 million in peak sales of glepaglutide.
Moving forward, investors are still closely watching Zealand’s clinical-stage obesity pipeline. Those data
helped the company net $1 billion
through a public offering earlier this year. One of the company’s top candidates, petrelintide, is a once-weekly amylin analog that Zealand has been shopping around to large pharmas for most of the year.