Levicept arose from the metaphorical ashes of Pfizer’s former R&D campus in the U.K. Now, the biotech has scored a phase 2 win for an osteoarthritis drug that can also be traced back to the Big Pharma.
The drug in question is LEVI-04, which targets the body’s neurotrophin pathway to deliver pain relief without interrupting the cartilage and bone repair processes. The injection is designed to combat the effects of osteoarthritis and chronic pain.
The study enrolled more than 510 participants across Europe, as well as in Hong Kong, with pain and disability due to osteoarthritis of the knee. At Week 17, the biotech saw a reduction in the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis (WOMAC) pain assessment from baseline of greater than 50% for all three doses of LEVI-04 when compared to placebo, hitting the trial’s primary endpoint.
The trial also hit all secondary endpoints, including assessing function and joint stiffness, as well as daily pain scores.
Monitoring for safety and for changes to the peripheral nervous system showed that LEVI-04 was well tolerated, with no increase in rapidly progressive osteoarthritis, the company noted.
“LEVI-04 provides analgesia via inhibition of neurotrophin-3, while avoiding the use-limiting side effects of anti-NGF antibodies, including rapidly progressive of osteoarthritis,” Levicept’s founder and chief scientific officer Simon Westbrook, Ph.D., said in an Aug. 6 release. “LEVI-04 retains the important trophic effects of the neurotrophins, including joint re-modelling.”
Levicept’s story begins in 2011, when Pfizer closed a sizable R&D campus in Sandwich, U.K., leaving more than 2,000 researchers out of a job. Westbrook was one of these investigators. He had been working on LEVI-04 and decided to buy the asset from his former employer and form a company of his own to take it forward.
Westbrook was aided by a 10 million pound sterling ($12.7 million) series A in 2014 and a 35 million pound ($44.6 million) series B in 2021, featuring longtime backers Medicxi, Advent Life Sciences and Gilde Healthcare, with Pfizer’s VC arm joining for the series B.
Kevin Johnson, Levicept’s chairman and a partner at Medicxi, said today’s results leave the biotech “exceptionally well-positioned to consider the next strategic options to advance LEVI-04’s development.”