Dr Kevan Herold on Teplizumab's Future in T1D Therapy

Questions about teplizumab's future in type 1 diabetes (T1D) treatment will likely be answered by results from Provention Bio's ongoing PROTECT trial, said Kevan Herold, MD, professor of immunobiology and medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

Teplizumab was approved by the FDA on November 17, 2022, to delay T1D in adults and children aged 8 years and older. The drug is given through intravenous infusion once daily for 14 consecutive days.

Transcript

What do you think is teplizumab’s place in T1D therapy going forward?

At this point, it's approved for a delay of type 1 diabetes. I would point out there are some people who are doing extraordinarily well, there are people who've gone beyond 10 years, that's a long time for a trial to have diabetes put off. I think there is clearly an important role for the drug right now clinically. In the future, like I mentioned, we're keen to see universal screening, number 1.

Number 2, the question is, where's it going to go for people with diabetes who've been diagnosed with diabetes? I mean, that's the majority of people that we find. I think that it will depend largely on what happens with the trial that's ongoing now. It's called PROTECT that the company Provention Bio is doing. That is a trial that enrolled people with new-onset type 1 diabetes, and it will read out probably this summer.

At the advisory panel meeting [in May 2021], the data that was largely reviewed was data both from the Provention trial, but also the previous trials that enrolled people with diabetes. The point that was made there is that the drug works in terms of delaying the progression of the disease. In some people, if you're intervening before they have clinical disease, they may never get clinical disease or there will be a delay in the diagnosis. In other people, if they've already been diagnosed with clinical disease, the delay in progression to the more labile forms of diabetes will be attenuated. So it has a very consistent clinical action. It's a question of when you intervene in the patient's progression, that you see the clinical benefits.