Clinical Pharmacology of Pemafibrate Extended-release Formulation in Patients with Hypertriglyceridemia-A Phase 2, Multicenter, Active-controlled, Randomized, Single-blind, Crossover study.

Aims: Efficacy, safety, and pharmacokinetics of the selective PPARα modulator pemafibrate as once-daily extended-release (XR) tablets were compared with those of twice-daily immediate-release (IR) tablets in patients with hypertriglyceridemia.

Methods: A multicenter, randomized, single-blind, active-controlled crossover, phase 2 clinical pharmacology study was performed in patients with hypertriglyceridemia. Patients were randomly assigned to IR 0.2 mg/day, XR 0.4 mg/day, or XR 0.8 mg/day before/after meals (fasted/fed) and treated for a total of eight weeks. The primary endpoint was percentage change in fasting serum triglycerides (TG).

Results: Of 63 randomized patients, 60 received the study drug. Patients were 78.3% male, mean age (±SD) 57.5±9.8 years, BMI 25.5±3.7 kg/m², and fasting TG 221.3±68.1 mg/dL. Fasting serum TG decreased significantly from baseline in all groups (LS mean [95% CI];-43.6 [-47.7, -39.5] % for IR 0.2 mg/day, -41.1 [-45.1, -37.0] % for XR 0.4mg/day, -39.7 [-43.8, -35.6] % for XR 0.8 mg/day), indicating that XR 0.4 and XR 0.8 mg/day were not inferior to IR 0.2 mg/day. TG-lowering effects tended to be stronger for fed than fasted administration. MRT_ss, t_max, and t_1/2 were longer for XR than for IR. Adverse events showed no major inter-group differences: 12.5% (5/40 patients) for IR 0.2, 17.5% (7/40) for XR 0.4, and 20.0% (8/40) for XR 0.8 mg/day.

Conclusions: In patients with hypertriglyceridemia, XR substantially lowered TG at all doses, with maximum effectiveness at 0.4 mg/day, the dose approved in Japan, to a level comparable to IR 0.2 mg/day. There were no safety concerns up to 0.8 mg/day.