Alnylam defends silencer drugs after Wainua trial failure
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- AstraZeneca on Friday detailed the failed trial of its drug Wainua in ATTR-CM, a heart condition involving transthyretin amyloid buildup.
- Some analysts interpreted the trial miss as evidence that silencer medicines offer no added benefit when patients are already on stabilizer drugs.
- Those analysts also raised the possibility that stabilizers may be superior to silencers in treating ATTR-CM.
- Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is now mounting a public defense of its silencer drugs against that interpretation.
- The defense has direct ramifications for Alnylam's marketed drug Amvuttra and its next-generation treatment nucresiran.
Why it matters: Alnylam's Amvuttra is already on the market and nucresiran is in development, so a dominant analyst narrative casting silencers as inferior to stabilizers in ATTR-CM puts both the company's commercial franchise and its next-gen pipeline on the defensive. Alnylam's response is an attempt to reframe the scientific debate around its core drug modality.
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