New Sotagliflozin Data Show Consistent Benefit in Reduction of Heart Attack, Stroke Across Range of Patients

Pharmacy Times spoke with Craig Granowitz, MD, PhD, chief medical officer at Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, to learn more about sotagliflozin and new data being presented at the American College of Cardiology 2022 Scientific Sessions.

Q: Can you give an overview of what sotagliflozin is?

Craig Granowitz, MD, PhD: Yeah, so, sotagliflozin is really unique in the SGLT inhibitor class. It is the only inhibitor of 2 different transporters of glucose—SGLT 1, and SGLT 2. All the other members of this similar class of medications inhibit only SGLT 2, and we believe that adding the dual inhibition of both SGLT 2 and SGLT 1 can have an even more favorable benefit for a number of different potential medical conditions.

Q: What was the design of the SCORED phase 3 trial?

The scored study is an at-risk group of patients for heart failure. The primary endpoints were cardiovascular death, hospitalization for heart failure, and unscheduled emergency heart failure visits. So, that combined endpoint is really a regulatory standard and clinically very meaningful, but only a portion of the patients had prior heart failure. In the new guidelines, there was a pre-heart failure group. So really, this study was designed similar to some SGLT 2 studies, [because it had] patients who are at risk of having heart failure, but not necessarily already with a diagnosis of heart failure, to reduce future related morbidity and mortality in that group of patients.

Q: What new findings are being presented at the American College of Cardiology 2022 Scientific Sessions?

The important findings of the ACC presentation and why it was selected as a late breaker is the consistency of the effect of reduction of heart attack and stroke and other major cardiovascular events in these at-risk patients. And what has been seen—but not seen uniformly across a wide range of patients with prior cardiovascular disease or not prior cardiovascular disease—is that those that were treated with sotagliflozin get a benefit of reduction in heart attack and stroke whether or not the patients had either former cardiovascular disease previously identified or not, and that has not been consistently seen, with SGLT 2 only inhibitors.