Novel Therapies for Asthma in the Pipeline

In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Michael E. Wechsler, MD, a pulmonologist at National Jewish Health in Denver, discusses some of the novel treatments and strategies that he believes are going to have the potential to benefit patients with severe asthma over the next few years.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

Hi, I am Professor Michael Wechsler. I’m at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado, and I’m really excited about what’s coming in the asthma and allergy space.

There are a lot of areas in which we’re going to see a lot of improvements in the coming years, but what excites me most are some of the novel therapies that are going to be emerging in the coming years. We’ve already seen the development of several biologic therapies over the last 20 years or so with anti-[immunoglobulin E], anti-IL [interleukin]-5s, anti-IL-413, and anti-TSLP [thymic stromal lymphopoietin]. But there are still patients who continue to have asthma symptoms and/or asthma exacerbations. And so what we’re trying to do is really give the right drug to the right patient at the right time. But we also need new therapies and I’m excited because people are studying a lot of novel therapies, whether it’s anti-IL-33 therapy with itepekimab or other anti-IL-33 therapies like tozorakimab.

There’s also a novel nanobody that’s being developed that targets both TSLP, or thymic stromal lymphopoietin, as well as IL-13. And that has the opportunity to treat a broad group of patients. And then there are other novel therapies like amlitelimab, which is a [non-]T cell depleting antibody that blocks OX-40 ligand, which is a key immune regulator. So there’s some opportunities there as well to treat a new subgroup of patients with severe asthma.

On top of those novel therapies, there are also some other strategies, longer acting therapies for patients with severe asthma. For instance, there is a long-acting anti-TSLP therapy that’s in development by Upstream Bio called verekitug. There’s also a long-acting anti-IL-5 therapy developed by GlaxoSmithKline, which is called depemokimab. And then there’s even an oral eosinophil-depleting therapy called dexpramipexole, which may play a role in arresting eosinophil development.

So there’s a lot of novel therapies out there that I think are really exciting and are going to have the potential to impact many of our patients with severe asthma.