Novartis's Serelaxin Has the Potential to Fulfill the Most Pertinent Unmet Needs in Acute Heart Failure by Reducing the Rate of Patient Mortality and the Rate of Worsening Renal Function

BURLINGTON, Mass., July 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --  Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, based on clinical trial data and thought leader opinion, Novartis's novel vasodilative therapy serelaxin has the potential to gain acceptance among cardiologists for the treatment of acute heart failure, given that it is predicted to reduce mortality and prevent worsening renal function. While cardiologists are most compelled by drugs that reduce patient mortality, the high price of novel acute heart failure treatments could offset cardiologist receptivity to such agents. Payers also indicate that they would only accommodate such high price premiums in the presence of substantial improvements in efficacy. Cardiorentis's ularitide is similarly predicted to reduce mortality as well as offer other improvements in efficacy and safety compared to current therapies.     

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The DecisionBase 2013 report entitled Acute Heart Failure: Can the Novel Vasodilators Serelaxin and Ularitide Fulfill the Unmet Needs Highlighted by Cardiologists? also finds that U.S. cardiologists regard reductions in acute heart failure hospital readmissions as an equally pressing unmet need to reducing patient mortality. However, none of the current or emerging therapies are expected to address the issue of patient rehospitalization. Although serelaxin was associated with a non-significant increase in rehospitalization in patient trials, this agent still received the highest preference share when compared to ularitide and Scios/Johnson & Johnson's Natrecor in Decision Resources' target product profile simulator.

The findings also reveal that all of the emerging acute heart failure therapies are set to surpass many of the current therapies in terms of both efficacy and safety. In particular, surveyed cardiologists express excitement for the novel vasodilative therapies, which are also expected to provide improvements in dyspnea over the current patient-share leader, furosemide (Sanofi's Lasix/Lasilix, generics).

"In the last 20 years, many of the therapies in development for acute heart failure resulted in disappointment," said Decision Resources Analyst Joseph Dwyer, M.Res, Ph.D. "The high attrition rate for drugs in the acute heart failure pipeline is largely accounted for by improper trial design stemming from poor understanding of the disease and the lack of identification of an ideal therapeutic window. The biologic vasodilator serelaxin is set to address some of the previous failures of acute heart failure therapies, and this new agent has the potential to fulfill the largest unmet needs in this patient population and could emerge as a truly breakthrough therapy."

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