A little over a year after reabsorbing its anticoagulant abelacimab, Novartis has now terminated two phase 3 trials for the antibody after one of the studies failed to beat Eliquis.<\/p>\n
The Swiss pharma had been evaluating abelacimab, a factor XI\/XIa inhibitor, against Bristol Myers Squibb\u2019s and Pfizer\u2019s blockbuster anticoagulant Eliquis in a phase 3 study<\/a> of patients with cancer-associated thrombosis (CAT). The trial kicked off in 2022 and enrolled 1,150 patients, according to the federal trials database.<\/p>\n But the study had been halted after a data review suggested that abelacimab would fail to beat the blockbuster, a Novartis spokesperson confirmed to Fierce. As a result, the pharma decided to end work on abelacimab for CAT\u2014including halting a separate phase 3 trial<\/a> comparing the drug to Pfizer’s anticoagulant Fragmin in patients with venous thromboembolism specifically related to gastrointestinal or genitourinary cancer.<\/p>\n But Novartis isn\u2019t ready to give up on the antibody completely. Abelacimab is still chugging along in a phase 3 trial<\/a> for atrial fibrillation, its lead indication. Novartis plans to file the blood thinner for approval in 2028, according to the company\u2019s 2025 annual report<\/a> (PDF).<\/p>\n Novartis regained abelacimab by buying Anthos Therapeutics, a biotech it originally created<\/a> in 2019 to lead development of the antibody. Novartis paid $925 million upfront in February 2025 to get its hands back<\/a> on abelacimab, at a time when other factor XI inhibitors had faced setbacks.<\/p>\n In the time between Anthos\u2019 creation and reacquisition, Bayer\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that twice as many people died of a cardiovascular event when taking its factor XIa inhibitor asundexian compared to Eliquis. At the same time, BMS and Johnson & Johnson\u2019s milvexian\u00a0failed<\/a>\u00a0a phase 2 trial.<\/p>\n But Bayer went on to link asundexian to a significant stroke reduction in a phase 3 win<\/a> that set the German pharma up for an approval filing this year. Milvexian, meanwhile, flopped<\/a> a phase 3 trial last fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A little over a year after reabsorbing its anticoagulant abelacimab, Novartis has now terminated two phase 3 trials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[127],"tags":[42070,42071,1115,16594,42073,42072,9275,206],"class_list":["post-81349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-novartis","tag-anthos-therapeutics","tag-anticoagulant","tag-biotech","tag-clinical-data","tag-eliquis","tag-failed-trials","tag-fierce-biotech-homepage","tag-novartis"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116730597603805882","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}