In Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia, Thought Leaders' Opinions and Clinical Data Indicate that Eravacycline Offers Efficacy and Delivery Advantages Over Currently Marketed Therapies

BURLINGTON, Mass., April 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources, one of the world's leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, based on clinical data and the opinions of interviewed thought leaders, Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals' intravenous and oral synthetic tetracycline derivative eravacycline will offer competitive advantages over currently marketed therapies for hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP). These advantages include eravacycline's delivery as well as its activity against multidrug-resistant pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae. Interviewed thought leaders also expect Forest/AstraZeneca's ceftazidime/avibactam and Cubist's ceftolozane/tazobactam to offer improvements in activity against multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa, compared to current HAP therapies.

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The DecisionBase 2013 report entitled With Growing Rates of Antimicrobial Resistance, Are Physicians and Hospital Pharmacy Directors Receptive to Premium-Priced Treatments Targeting Multidrug-Resistant Pathogens? also finds that surveyed U.S. and European infectious disease specialists agree that clinical trial data demonstrating clinical cure rate in clinically evaluable patients at test-of-cure visit is a key driver of their prescribing decisions in HAP. Clinical data and the opinions of interviewed thought leaders indicate that the current therapies vancomycin and meropenem (AstraZeneca's Merrem/Meronem, generics) are comparable on this attribute and have no advantage over sales-leading Pfizer's Zyvox. Additionally, rising rates of antimicrobial resistance have made frequently used first-line therapies, such as piperacillin/tazobactam (Pfizer's Zosyn, generics) and levofloxacin (Johnson & Johnson's Levaquin, Sanofi's Tavanic, Daiichi Sankyo's Cravit, generics), less effective in clinically curing HAP patients.

"Nearly all trials of antibiotics are powered to demonstrate non-inferiority between an emerging therapy and an active comparator, and it is unlikely that results from HAP clinical trials will show significantly better clinical cure rates for emerging drugs when compared with current therapies," said Decision Resources Analyst David Holman, Ph.D. "Drug developers may be better served targeting improvements in pathogen-specific cure rates for emerging HAP therapies as these attributes may be more easily-attainable targets for developers looking to differentiate their emerging therapy from marketed products."

The report also finds that surveyed U.S. hospital pharmacy directors were generally willing to grant favorable formulary status to new HAP therapies with improved activity against multidrug-resistant HAP pathogens, particularly MRSA multidrug-resistant P. aeruginosa, and extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producing Enterobacteriaceae. Patients with HAP caused by these pathogens have significantly fewer treatment options and ultimately poorer clinical outcomes. Responses from surveyed hospital pharmacy directors revealed that therapies with improved activity against these pathogens could command price premiums to current treatments.

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