Publications

Buch et al. evaluated the efficacy and safety of filgotinib in patients with moderately active rheumatoid arthritis and inadequate response to methotrexate in the FINCH 1 study. At     Wk 12, ACR20 response rates were significantly higher with filgotinib 200 mg (77.9%) and 100 mg (67.8%) compared to placebo (43.8%). Safety profiles for both filgotinib doses were similar to adalimumab.

Patients classified as having a high neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR-High) who received filgotinib 200mg + MTX/csDMARDs exhibited consistently better responses after 12 weeks across clinical trials, clinical endpoints, and PROs, compared with NLR-Low patients. Taylor et al. analysed data from the 3 FINCH trials to investigate the potential association of baseline NLR with improved clinical response to filgotinib in MTX-naïve or MTX-experienced RA populations.

Worth, et al. found that namilumab did not show efficacy compared with placebo in patients with active axSpA, but the treatment was generally well tolerated. An unusually high proportion of ASAS20 responders at Week 12 were observed in the placebo group, which had a small sample size compared to the namilumab arm.

This pooled analysis of four Phase 3 RCTs investigated the long-term efficacy baricitinib in patients with active RA who were MTX-IR, csDMARD-IR, or bDMARD-IR. They found that baricitinib demonstrated efficacy up to 6.5 years and was well tolerated.

The ContRAst 3 study investigated otilimab, in RA patients with inadequate responses to multiple treatments. Otilimab did not significantly improve ACR20 versus placebo at Weeks 12 or 24. In addition, there we no significant improvements in secondary endpoints, including disease activity, disability, and pain.

This study by Tanaka, et al. shows that filgotinib reduces peripheral protein biomarkers associated with JAK/STAT signalling, inflammatory signalling, immune cell migration, and bone resorption in RA patients. Notably, filgotinib 200 mg significantly reduced IL-6, TNF, CXCL13 levels as early as Week 4.

This review by Taylor, et al. reviews the long-term safety and efficacy data for baricitinib. Results from several studies showed that baricitinib has greater efficacy and survival compared to TNF inhibitors, and that the rate of CDAI <10 for baricitinib-treated RA patients increased over the course of seven years. Data also showed that remission rates were higher in real-world evidence than in RCTs.

Post hoc analysis findings provide the first data evaluating the importance of treatment order with JAKinib vs TNFi as initial therapy, suggesting that a JAKinib first strategy leads to more rapid improvements in treatment outcomes following csDMARD failure.