Prospects for new and emerging therapeutics in severe asthma: the role of biologics

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Asthma is a common and heterogeneous disease. While current conventional therapies are effective in the majority of the patients, a significant subgroup remain uncontrolled despite these treatments. Different biological agents are currently approved or undergoing development for treatment of asthma, including anti-IgE, anti-interleukin (IL)-5, anti-IL-13, anti-IL-4 and anti-thymic stromal lymphopoietin agents. This review will focus on the currently available evidence regarding the new and emerging biological agents in severe asthma.

Areas covered: A non-systematic review of the available English-language literature regarding severe asthma and biological agents was performed. We summarized and discussed the current evidence about the use of new and emerging biological agents in severe asthma.

Expert commentary: Because of the heterogeneity of response to therapy in refractory asthma it is of utmost importance to correctly estimate patient outcomes before starting biological therapy to make patient selection more effective. Currently, the decision of which biologic to initiate in patients with uncontrolled severe asthma should be made based on the atopic status, blood eosinophil and total IgE levels, exacerbation history, safety profile, cost, frequency and route of administration.

KEYWORDS:

• Severe asthma
• uncontrolled asthma
• biologic agents
• biologics
• new treatments

Declaration of interest

S. Bavbek is an advisory board member for Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was not funded.