Medicine Matters rheumatology

So currently there are two IL-6 inhibitors that are approved for use in rheumatoid arthritis, as well as one in several other diseases. Both of these affect the IL-6 receptor. Olokizumab is different.

It affects the IL-6 itself. It blocks IL-6 itself. And for that reason you can use a lower dose of olokizumab. And that's what makes it novel.

The clinical trials, which you've already reviewed, showed that in CREDO2, olokizumab plus methotrexate was not inferior to adalimumab plus methotrexate. That actually hasn't been shown with tocilizumab and sarilumab. Tocilizumab and sarilumab in testing versus adalimumab tested themselves versus adalimumab monotherapy.

And we know that adalimumab monotherapy, or without methotrexate, is not as effective as adalimumab plus methotrexate. So what's unique is that it affects IL-6 itself. You can use a lower dose. And therefore you should have less injection site reactions.

It can be used every two to four weeks, rather than every week or every two weeks, with the two approved molecules. And it has been shown to be not inferior to adalimumab in a head to head trial, the way that we use adalimumab in combination with methotrexate. And those are the key take-home findings for the CREDO trials.

What's also been shown in the CREDO trials was that Olokizumab is effective in patients with TNF incomplete responders. And that's a very significant population of patients.

The next step for recognize the potential of the drug would actually be to be, I would think, to do the trials that have not been done. How does olokizumab work in patients with early RA? How does it work versus methotrexate? How does it work as the monotherapy, versus TNF inhibitor we don't have the answer to those questions. We would expect that all those studies would be positive. But we don't know until we do the study.

The current status of approval for Olokizumab is that it is approved in Russia and one other Eastern European country. And they will file for approval in the United States in the future. Whether it's approved or not will, obviously, depend upon its clinical outcomes in the trials that they've done or what they might do, as well as their safety profile, and what the FDA or EMA decides about its relative benefit risk. It should be approvable in both the EMA and by the FDA.