COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Use of the dual interleukin-17 (IL-17) inhibitor bimekizumab (Bimzelx) was associated with rapid reductions in signs and symptoms of radiographic axial spondyloarthritis, reported investigators in the BE MOBILE 2 phase 3 trial.
Dr Désiréé van der Heijde
At least half of all patients achieved an Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score (ASDAS) of less than 2.1 by week 24 of treatment with bimekizumab, and there were marked reductions in objective signs of inflammation, reported Désiréé van der Heijde, MD, PhD, of Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands.
“The safety we have seen in this trial was consistent with what we have seen [with bimekizumab] in other trials and other diseases,” she said here at the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) 2022 Annual Meeting.
IL-17 Inhibitor Times 2
Bimekizumab is a monoclonal immunoglobulin 1 antibody that selectively inhibits IL-17A and IL-17F. It is approved in the European Union for treating adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.
In the BE MOBILE 2 trial, investigators enrolled patients aged 18 years and older who had ankylosing spondylitis, who met modified New York criteria, who had active disease at screening and at baseline, as defined by having a Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) score of 4 or more and spinal pain of 4 or more on a scale of 0 to 10, and whose disease failed to respond to two different NSAIDs or who were either intolerant of or had contraindications to NSAIDs.
The patients were randomly assigned on a 2:1 basis to receive either bimekizumab 160 mg every 4 weeks (221 patients) or placebo (111 patients) for 16 weeks. All patients were switched over at 16 weeks to bimekizumab maintenance for up to 1 year of total treatment.
Van der Heijde reported 24-week data from the trial, including data from 8 weeks of additional follow-up.
All Endpoints Met
The trial met its primary endpoint of 40% improvement in Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society response criteria (ASAS40) at week 16. There was a 44.8% improvement with bimekizumab, compared with 22.6% with placebo (P < .001).
All secondary endpoints also favored the bimekizumab arm, including ASAS40 among patients who had not previously received a tumor necrosis factor–alpha (TNF-alpha) inhibitor, ASAS20, BASDAI functional index, ankylosing spondylitis quality-of-life index, and others.
Responses to bimekizumab were consistent across subpopulations of patients with or without prior TNF-alpha inhibitor exposure, van der Heidje said.
In addition, use of bimekizumab was associated with a significant improvement from baseline, compared with placebo, in objective measures of inflammation, including MRI spine Berlin score at week 16 (mean, -2.3 vs 0; P < .001), Spondylitis Research Consortium of Canada (SPARCC) MRI sacroiliac joint score at week 16 (mean, -5.6 vs 1.1), and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein at week 16 (mean, 2.4 vs 6.3 mg/L; P < .001).
The most frequent treatment-related adverse events were nasopharyngitis, diarrhea, and oral candidiasis, all of which were more common in the bimekizumab arm, as well as headache, the incidence of which was similar between the arms.
Overall, 6.4% of patients taking bimekizumab had fungal infections, compared with none in the placebo group. The infections were mild or moderate, localized, and mucocutaneous in nature. Only two patients discontinued the drug because of fungal infections: one for oral candidiasis, and one for esophageal candidiasis.
“Promising Results”
Fabian Proft, MD, head of the clinical trials unit at Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany, who was not involved in the study, told Medscape Medical News that the data looked very good.
Dr Fabian Proft
“These are the first phase 3 data on dual inhibition of IL-17A and F with bimekizumab in axial spondyloarthritis, and the data are really promising,” he said. “For nonradiographic disease, the data also look very promising, and when we’re looking into the future, it might be a therapeutic option for us as treating rheumatologists.”
The study was funded by UCB Pharma. Van der Heijde has received consulting fees from the company and others. Proft has consulted for and has been on the speaker’s bureau for UCB and other pharmaceutical companies.
European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) 2022 Annual Meeting: Abstract OP0019. Presented June 1, 2022.
Neil Osterweil, an award-winning medical journalist, is a long-standing and frequent contributor to Medscape.
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