New Drugs Might Give Heart Patients an Edge

Cangrelor, Inspra and inclacumab seem to improve outcomes in company-funded trials

By E.J. Mundell

HealthDay Reporter

SUNDAY, March 10 (HealthDay News) -- In the search for better medicines to safely help heart patients, clinical trials testing three new drugs appear to offer some promise.

Two of the drugs, cangrelor and inclacumab, might improve outcomes for patients undergoing cardiac interventions such as angioplasty or stenting, while a third drug, Inspra, seems to lower heart patients' odds for death and heart failure following a heart attack.

All three trials were funded by the respective drugs' makers, and all three were presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) in San Francisco.

In the first trial, researchers compared an as-yet unapproved blood thinner called cangrelor against the current standard medication, Plavix (clopidogrel), for patients who have recently had a stent implanted in an artery to help improve blood flow.

According to the ACC, more than 600,000 coronary artery stent procedures are conducted in the United States each year, but doctors have long sought safer alternatives to Plavix to help prevent clots. Plavix comes with one big drawback for patients rushed to the hospital with suspected heart attack: It is taken in pill form, and its anti-clotting effects (with accompanying bleeding risk) may not wear off for up to a week.

That means that pre-treating a new patient with Plavix can trigger long delays in needed heart surgery, as the patient waits for the bleeding risk to subside.

Cangrelor may help get around that issue. Even though it is delivered intravenously and begins acting quickly, its anti-clotting effects also fade quickly -- within an hour -- should any bleeding complications occur, the study authors said.

So, doctors might feel free to give heart patients cangrelor upon admittance to the hospital and then send them immediately for angioplasty -- a minimally invasive procedure to reopen clogged vessels -- or stenting, if needed.

In the trial, which was funded by cangrelor's maker, New Jersey-based The Medicines Company, researchers compared short-term outcomes for 11,000 patients who underwent stent placement at one of 153 centers around the world.

Some of the patients got cangrelor, while others got Plavix. The study was also published online Sunday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The research team reported that cangrelor reduced by 22 percent the odds of a patient dying, having a heart attack or having a clot develop in the stented vessel within two days of the procedure, compared to patients who took Plavix. Safety profiles were similar: Severe bleeding at 48 hours after the stenting procedure occurred in 0.16 percent of those on cangrelor and 0.11 percent of those given Plavix.

Commenting at a press conference on Sunday, Dr. Cindy Grines, a cardiologist at Detroit Medical Center, said that if cangrelor receives U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval it could have a "huge impact" for heart patients.

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