Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARNA) reported today data from the pivotal BLOSSOM (Behavioral modification and LOrcaserin Second Study for Obesity Management) Phase 3 trial that demonstrate improvements in patients' body composition, cardiovascular risk factors and quality of life. These findings add to the previously announced top-line BLOSSOM data that showed highly significant weight loss with lorcaserin over one year of treatment in 4,008 patients.
The late-breaking data were presented by Lee Kaplan, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center, at Obesity 2009, the 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of The Obesity Society.
"Safety is of paramount importance in treating patients who are overweight or have obesity," said Dr. Kaplan. "We need new therapies that help patients reduce their weight and improve cardiovascular factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, while avoiding cardiac toxicity and symptoms of depression. Lorcaserin works by selectively affecting a unique and important pathway, which allows for significant weight loss and improvements in these important risk factors, along with an excellent safety and tolerability profile."
William R. Shanahan, M.D., Arena's Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, stated, "Treatment with lorcaserin offers patients the opportunity to achieve sustainable weight loss in a well-tolerated manner, resulting in improved cardiometabolic health and quality of life. In order to improve overall health, it's important to see these measurements moving in the right direction as patients reduce their weight. Based on lorcaserin's safety and efficacy profile, we expect primary care physicians to find lorcaserin an attractive first-line therapy for weight management."
Specifically, the new data demonstrate that treatment with lorcaserin over one year was associated with highly significant improvements or favorable trends compared to placebo in multiple secondary endpoints evaluated in the trial:
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