Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: LXRX), a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering breakthrough treatments for human disease, presented clinical data and analysis from its Phase 2a clinical trial of LX4211 for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus at ENDO 2010 today. The results reported today included newly-obtained data showing a trend of increased total GLP-1 in both LX4211 treatment arms relative to placebo as measured in a post-trial analysis of blood samples.
The Phase 2a clinical trial demonstrated that administration of LX4211, a dual SGLT2 and SGLT1 inhibitor, produced rapid and significant improvement in multiple assessments of glycemic control as well as positive trends in cardiovascular and metabolic parameters after only 28 days of dosing in type 2 diabetes patients. Importantly, after only four weeks of dosing, average percent hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), a measure of blood glucose levels over time, was significantly reduced by 1.15 in the 150 mg dose group.
"The increases observed in total GLP-1 levels among type 2 diabetes patients randomized to LX4211 are consistent with what might be expected from SGLT1 inhibition in the small intestine stimulating the endogenous incretin pathway," commented Brian Zambrowicz, Ph.D., Lexicon's executive vice president and chief scientific officer. "We believe the unique-in-class SGLT1 activity synergizes with SGLT2 inhibition to produce the rapid and robust glycemic control observed with this compound in our Phase 2a study."
LX4211 is an orally-delivered small molecule under development as a potential treatment for diabetes. LX4211 inhibits both sodium-glucose cotransporter type 2, or SGLT2, and sodium-glucose cotransporter type 1, or SGLT1. SGLT2 is a transporter responsible for most of the glucose reabsorption performed by the kidney. SGLT1 is a transporter responsible for glucose and galactose absorption in the gastrointestinal tract, and to a lesser extent than SGLT2, glucose reabsorption in the kidney.
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