Boehringer Ingelheim recently announced that its phase-two study results show that the company’s new treatment, IL-23 inhibitor risankizumab, induces remission in patients who have moderate-to-severe Crohn’s disease.
Patients received risankizumab treatments for 12 weeks. After that time, 15-20 percent of these patients -- each of whom had moderate-to-severe Crohn’s disease -- had reached clinical remission. Moreover, many of these patients had failed other treatments using one or more TNF antagonists.
"Patients with moderate-to-severe Crohn's disease who have failed anti-TNF therapy have very limited choices for treatment," Theresa Podrebarac, vice president of immunology clinical development for AbbVie, said. "We are encouraged by the promising results seen in this study with risankizumab and look forward to continuing development of this compound as a potential new treatment option for patients and physicians."
Researchers have stated that these results show risankizumab can successfully and selectively block IL-23.
"These results are particularly encouraging because of the difficult-to-treat population within the study,” Brian Feagan, principal investigator of this study, said. “Our patients had endoscopically confirmed moderate or more severe disease activity at study entry, and the majority had previously failed treatment with one or more TNF antagonists."
