AZ’s Farxiga gets fast track designation for heart failure

The FDA has granted fast track designation to AstraZeneca’s diabetes drug, Farxiga, which is already approved as a treatment for type-2 diabetes. Farxiga is part of the SGLT2-inhibitor class of antidiabetics that cause the kidneys to expel blood sugar from the body through urine. Diabetes is often associated with a high risk of heart failure.
The designation is for the development of the drug to reduce the risk of deadly heart attacks and disease progression in adults with the HFrEF and HFpEF subtypes of heart failure. Approval came on the back of positive results from two late-stage clinical trials where in one study, circa 40% of participants suffered from type-2 diabetes, as is common among heart failure patients, whereas the remaining participants did not.