Drug development in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) remains challenging. The pharmacological properties of the two approved drugs, pirfenidone and nintedanib, need to be considered when selecting and developing new drug candidates. We discuss the challenges and opportunities in our new review in Drug Discovery Today.
We probably don’t need to highlight the fact that despite two approved drugs, IPF remains an area with a need for therapies that offer complementary and/or improved efficacy and tolerability. At the time pirfenidone and nintedanib were developed, they represented a big step forward with demonstrated effectiveness in slowing disease progression – and this continues to be so.
However, the properties of these drugs do not make it straightforward to establish novel treatments, as their development needs to take the profiles of pirfenidone and nintedanib into account. This starts on a molecular level with questions of overlap and differentiation of novel mode of actions, determination of added benefit, potential PK and safety interactions, and design of clinical studies.
Following our earlier review of the therapeutic landscape in NASH, we have now taken a similar approach in reviewing the challenges and opportunities in IPF drug development. The review has just been published by Drug Discovery Today, and you can obtain a copy here.
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