Use As Treatment
Due to its enormous apparent efficacy, some have speculated that development of synthetic ApoA-1 Milano may be a key factor in eradicating coronary heart disease.
Esperion Therapeutics, a high tech venture capital start-up, demonstrated proof of efficacy in both animals and humans, spending many millions of dollars over several years to conduct a single human trial which showed impressive and rapid efficacy by IVUS of coronary arteries. However, over the course of the project they produced only enough ApoA-1 Milano to partially treat thirty out of the forty-five people in the randomized trial, giving them one weekly dose each for five weeks. The results of the trial were published in JAMA (November 5, 2003).
Hoping to develop a more effective treatment than their current product Lipitor, Pfizer purchased and internalized Esperion shortly before JAMA published the results of the Apo A-1 Milano trial.
Currently, no drugs based on ApoA-1 Milano are commercially available. Rights to ApoA-1 Milano were acquired in 2003 by Pfizer. Clinically known as ETC-216, Pfizer did not move trials forward, probably because the complex protein is very expensive to produce and must be administered intravenously, limiting its application compared to oral medications.
Read more about this topic: Apo A-1 Milano
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