Expert Interview
A Second Look at Verona's ensifentrine and its potential in COPD following the results of ENHANCE-2 trial
Ticker(s): VRNAInstitution: UCLA
- Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
- Treats ~50 patients with COPD and assists fellows in the management of their COPD patients as their attending physician.
- Research interests include the pulmonary effects of smoked substance abuse and community air pollution, the pathophysiology, prevention and treatment of COPD, the pathophysiology and clinical pharmacology of asthma and the biology and pharmacologic management of scleroderma-related interstitial lung disease; has authored 620 peer reviewed journal articles.
Roughly how many patients with COPD do you currently manage?
Added By: c_adminOn a scale from 1-10 (10 being extremely excited) where would you rate your level of excitement for ensifentrine?
Added By: c_admin
Only 15% of patients in this trial were on double therapy (mostly ICS/LABA). If the exacerbation reduction benefit is skewed toward those who were on single therapy (LAMA or LABA), will that make you less excited about this data? What will make you confident that this is a better alternative to simply putting patient onto the existing double therapies?
If patients on double therapy are helped by adding a third agent, why use ensifentrine rather than adding ICS which is inexpensive (or adding whatever LAMA/LABA/ICS is not in their double therapy depending on what they started on)?
Added By: c_adminGiven that the most severe patients are predominantly on triple therapy already, how can you be sure from this data that they will benefit at all by adding ensifentrine to that? No patients in the trial were on triple therapy. So who will this drug be used in?
Added By: c_adminIs twice per day nebulizer inconvenient and impractical for patients? Do your patients regularly use a nebulizer and if prescribed it, are they compliant with that? Will this also factor into a decision whether to add ensifentrine rather than ICS or other already available LAMA/LABA agents they are not already getting?
The subgroup analysis shows skewed FEV1 benefit toward moderate patients (moderate ~135mL, Severe only ~45mL). Does this mean it doesn't really work in the most severe patients where the unmet need is?
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