RedHill has left a phase 3 asset behind with hopes that another company may pick it up.
Hoping to lighten its load, RedHill Biopharma has thrown a phase 3 lung disease program from its pack in an attempt to conserve resources and carry its COVID-19 med to the top.
The Israel-based company has abandoned its late-stage trial of RHB-204, an investigational oral drug designed to treat lung disease tied to nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). The common group of bacteria can cause serious infection in a small number of people—most often the immunocompromised. There currently aren’t any singular, first-line therapies available for the condition.
The trial discontinuation is due to slow patient enrollment, the current state of the financial markets and “the negative biotech sector sentiment,” Gilead Raday, RedHill's chief operating officer and head of R&D, said in a May 22 release.
RHB-204 had already picked up both fast-track and orphan drug designations from the FDA for NTM. Despite this, RedHill would rather seek an out-licensing partner to take on the asset, which is also being assessed in a phase 3 trial for a serious lung disease known as pulmonary mycobacterium avium complex disease.
Though RedHill has lightened its load to better funnel its resources to other programs, the company said it is still welcoming “revenue-generating product acquisition.”
But for now, the company is prioritizing RHB-107, also known as upamostat, a once-daily oral medicine for non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. In a small phase 2/3 trial, the antiviral staved off hospitalization in all 41 patients with symptomatic COVID-19 in the phase 2 portion.
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