Wall Street pushback against relaxin player Tectonic Therapeutic Inc. was sharp, but a trial design that differs could save the drug from the fate of Astrazeneca plc’s long-acting relaxin-2 analogue, AZD-3427, which the pharma giant has “removed from phase II,” where it was being tested in a trial called Re-phire, because of less than ideal efficacy.
News from Tectonic Therapeutic Inc. in January took away some of Wall Street’s jitters about the relaxin pathway brought about by Eli Lilly and Co.’s recent moves, but another big pharma player – Astrazeneca plc – is still providing suspense in pulmonary hypertension in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.
A packaged nanoparticle that delivered a relaxin-encoding gene therapy with microRNA reduced liver fibrosis, researchers in the laboratory of Leaf Huang at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Eshelman School of Pharmacy described in the Jan. 21, 2021, issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
