Is Merck's New Obesity Drug Candidate in Serious Trouble?

Well, I wish I hadn’t been right about this one. Last month I spent some time expressing doubts about Merck’s (MRK) new obesity drug candidate taranabant, a cannabinoid-1 ligand similar to Sanofi-Aventis’s (SNY) failed Acomplia (rimonabant). S-A ran into a number of central nervous system side effects in the clinic, and although they’ve gotten the drug approved in a few markets, it’s not selling well. U.S. approval, now long delayed, looks extremely unlikely.

I couldn’t see why Merck wouldn’t run into the same sort of trouble. If a report from a Wall St. analyst (Aileen Salares of Leerink Swann) is correct, they have. Merck’s presenting on the compound at the next American College of Cardiology meeting (at the end of this month in Chicago), and information from the talk has apparently leaked out in violation of the ACC's embargo. There appears to be some difficulty both on the efficacy and side effect fronts – bad news all around.

The company was aiming for a 5% weight loss, but only reached that at the highest dose (4 mg). The report is that CNS side effects were prominent at this level, twice the rate of the placebo group. The next lower dose, 2 mg, missed the efficacy endpoint and still seems to have shown CNS effects. According to Salares, nearly twice the number of patients in the drug treatment group dropped out of the trial as compared to placebo, citing neurological effects which included thoughts of suicide.

While there’s no confirmation from Merck on these figures, they’re disturbingly plausible, because that’s just the profile that got rimonabant into trouble. If this holds up, I think we can say that CB-1 ligands as a CNS therapeutic class are dead, at least until we understand a lot more about their role in the brain. Two drugs with different structures and different pharmacological profiles have now run into the same suite of unacceptable side effects, and the main thing they have in common is CB-1 receptor occupancy. There’s always the possibility that a CB-1 antagonist (or inverse agonist) might have a use out in the periphery – they could have immunomodulatory effects – but anyone who tries this out would be well advised to do it with a compound that doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier.

And as for taranabant, if the data are as reported I don’t see how Merck can get this compound through the FDA. Even if they did, by some weird accident, I don’t see why they’d pull the pin on such a potential liability grenade. Can you imagine what the labeling would have to look like in order to try (in vain, most likely) to insulate the company from lawsuits? That makes a person wonder how on earth the company could have been talking about submitting it for approval later this year, which is what they were doing just recently. They must have had these numbers when they made that statement – wouldn’t you think? And they must have immediately realized that this would be trouble – you’d think. If that Leerink Swan report is correct, the company’s recent statements are just bizarre.

Comments

[selene:]

The abstracts are all published on line a couple of weeks before the event. They are publicly available. Here is the link

www.abstractsonline.co...={2AC39EBE-EB29-4F99-9...

2008 Mar 13 09:55 AM

[upndown1313:]

Discontinuations due to GI- and psychiatric-related AEs were 0.7%, 1.7%, 2.7% and 4.6%, 8.9%, 12.5%, respectively, for Pbo, 2- and 4- mg groups. Most AEs were mild to moderate in intensity.
Conclusions: Treatment with taranabant for 52 wks led to clinically meaningful weight loss and improvements in metabolic parameters with a favorable risk/benefit profile.

2008 Mar 15 10:14 AM