Sickle cell mechanisms that could fill the hole left by Pfizer’s Oxbryta withdrawal

Pfizer’s withdrawal of Oxbryta increases the urgency for development of new sickle cell treatments, especially therapies that can be deployed at a scale commensurate with the need.

Until there are definitive answers about the reasons for the imbalance in vaso-occlusive crises and deaths among patients treated with Oxbryta voxelotor from Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE), the focus will be on drugs that work by other mechanisms, and possibly on trials with hard endpoints rather than the surrogate endpoint used in Oxbryta’s approval...