The Zhitong Finance App learned that Novo Nordisk (NVO.US) has terminated two additional clinical trials of its cardiovascular experimental drug.
Earlier this year, Novo Nordisk said that Ziltivekimab failed to reduce the risk of myocardial infarction and stroke, weakening market expectations for other ongoing clinical studies. The Danish pharmaceutical company said on Monday that it has stopped two trials evaluating whether Ziltivekimab can help patients with heart failure, each targeting different treatment outcomes.
A Novo Nordisk spokesperson said that the data monitoring committee found that compared with the results of previous failed tests, the two tests “are extremely unlikely to have different outcomes.”
Novo Nordisk will continue to conduct another separate study to evaluate Ziltivekimab's potential efficacy after myocardial infarction, the spokesperson added.
Earlier, Novartis Pharmaceuticals (NVS.US) also reported that its experimental heart disease drug failed to help reduce deaths, myocardial infarctions, and stroke events, which raised questions about the relevant theoretical mechanisms supporting the drug's development. Within a week, the company's second major drug candidate came to an end in later research. The loss this time was its potential star heart drug pelacarsen.
The significance of Novartis's two losses is not limited to a single drug. Novartis previously positioned both pelacarsen and rapcabtagene autoleucel (rap-cel for short) as potential breakthroughs in reshaping treatment patterns in their respective fields — the former targets hereditary cardiovascular risk that could not be interfered with before, while the latter expanded CAR-T cell therapy to the field of autoimmune diseases.