Santhera Pharmaceuticals chief medical officer Dr Shabir Hasham talked with Proactive's Stephen Gunnion about the company’s progress in launching AGAMREE, a dissociative corticosteroid for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

Santhera is a Swiss specialty pharmaceutical company focused on treatments for pediatric rare diseases. Its lead product, AGAMREE, aims to offer comparable efficacy to traditional corticosteroids while reducing the debilitating side effects often associated with long-term steroid use in DMD patients. Hasham noted that current treatments are frequently discontinued or reduced after a few years due to growth stunting, weight gain, and other complications.

“Our drug AGAMREE is a corticosteroid, but we’ve been able to modify the structure of it… we offer the same efficacy… but we are able to avoid many of the debilitating side effects,” said Hasham.

The treatment has already launched in Germany, Austria, and the UK, with further European rollouts expected in the coming months. Commercialisation in the US is underway via a partnership with Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, and entry into China has begun through Spirit Genetics.

New long-term data from the Guardian study shows patients treated for up to eight years exhibited no growth stunting and significantly fewer fractures. Hasham said the data may encourage wider use in countries where steroid uptake has been low and added, “This will make a very positive impact in terms of our ability to roll the drug out.”

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