Roche announces new data for investigational arthritis therapy

Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical company, has announced new data for its investigational rheumatoid arthritis (RA) drug, Acterma.

New results from two phase III studies and a phase II study were presented to the American College of Rheumatology’s (ACR) annual meeting in Washington DC.

In one of the studies, involving 302 patients, approximately 40 per cent of patients demonstrated a 70 per cent improvement in RA symptoms after using Acterma for 52 weeks, as measured by the ACR’s scale of improvement. Furthermore, around 59 per cent achieved remission according to the disease activity scale.

Another trial showed that over a quarter of patients could improve their symptoms by 70 per cent after 24 weeks of use with Acterma, which acts as an interleukin-6 receptor body.

Mark Genovese, associate professor of medicine in immunology and rheumatology at Stanford University’s medical centre, remarked: “These findings are important because about half of all patients do not receive optimal results with current treatments and these data suggest that targeted blockade of IL-6 shows promise in the treatment of RA.”

Roche has been developing the drug with Chugai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company.

Earlier this week, Biogen Idec published positive data for rituximab, another rheumatoid arthritis treatment sold by Roche under the MabThera trademark.