Erenumab, sold under the brand name Aimovig, is a

medication A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy ( pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and ...

which targets the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor (CGRPR) for the prevention of migraine. It is administered by subcutaneous injection. Erenumab, which was developed by

Amgen Amgen Inc. (formerly Applied Molecular Genetics Inc.) is an American multinational biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. One of the world's largest independent biotechnology companies, Amgen was established in T ...

and

Novartis Novartis AG is a Swiss-American multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (global research).name="novartis.com">https://www.novartis.com/research-development/research-loc ...

, was approved in May 2018, and was the first CGRPR antagonist to be approved by the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...

. In 2020, it was the 234th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 1million prescriptions.

Medical uses

Erenumab is indicated for the prevention of migraine in adults.

Side effects

Common side effects are

constipation Constipation is a bowel dysfunction that makes bowel movements infrequent or hard to pass. The stool is often hard and dry. Other symptoms may include abdominal pain, bloating, and feeling as if one has not completely passed the bowel movement ...

pruritus Itch (also known as pruritus) is a sensation that causes the desire or reflex to scratch. Itch has resisted many attempts to be classified as any one type of sensory experience. Itch has many similarities to pain, and while both are unpleasant ...

, muscle

spasm A spasm is a sudden involuntary contraction of a muscle, a group of muscles, or a hollow organ such as the bladder. A spasmodic muscle contraction may be caused by many medical conditions, including dystonia. Most commonly, it is a muscle c ...

s, as well as mild and mostly transient reactions at the injection site.

Interactions

Erenumab was shown not to interact with

ethinylestradiol Ethinylestradiol (EE) is an estrogen medication which is used widely in birth control pills in combination with progestins. In the past, EE was widely used for various indications such as the treatment of menopausal symptoms, gynecological disord ...

, norgestimate or the migraine drug sumatriptan. It is expected to generally have a low potential for interactions because it is not metabolized by

cytochrome P450 Cytochromes P450 (CYPs) are a superfamily of enzymes containing heme as a cofactor that functions as monooxygenases. In mammals, these proteins oxidize steroids, fatty acids, and xenobiotics, and are important for the clearance of various co ...

enzymes.

Pharmacology

Mechanism of action

Erenumab is a fully human

monoclonal antibody A monoclonal antibody (mAb, more rarely called moAb) is an antibody produced from a cell Lineage made by cloning a unique white blood cell. All subsequent antibodies derived this way trace back to a unique parent cell. Monoclonal antibodies ...

blocking the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor (CGRPR).

Pharmacokinetics

After subcutaneous injection, the erenumab has an estimated

bioavailability In pharmacology, bioavailability is a subcategory of absorption and is the fraction (%) of an administered drug that reaches the systemic circulation. By definition, when a medication is administered intravenously, its bioavailability is 100%. Ho ...

of 82%. Highest

blood plasma Blood plasma is a light amber-colored liquid component of blood in which blood cells are absent, but contains proteins and other constituents of whole blood in suspension. It makes up about 55% of the body's total blood volume. It is the intr ...

concentrations are reached after four to six days. Like other proteins, the substance is degraded by proteolysis to small

peptide Peptides (, ) are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Long chains of amino acids are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty amino acids are called oligopeptides, and include dipeptides, tripeptides, and tetrapeptides. ...

s and

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although hundreds of amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the alpha-amino acids, which comprise proteins. Only 22 alpha a ...

s. It has an

elimination half-life Biological half-life (also known as elimination half-life, pharmacologic half-life) is the time taken for concentration of a biological substance (such as a medication) to decrease from its maximum concentration ( Cmax) to half of Cmax in the bl ...

of 28 days.

History

Erenumab was developed by Amgen Inc. in conjunction with

. In the phase III STRIVE

clinical trial Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, diet ...

955 patients were divided into three groups in a 1:1:1 ratio. Each group was injected subcutaneously monthly with 0, 70 or 140 mg erenumab over a period of 6 months. The results were measured as mean monthly migraine days in months 4, 5, and 6. At baseline the patients experienced between 4 and 14 migraine days per month with an average of 8.3. The medication significantly reduced the number of migraine days per month by 3.2 in the 70-mg group and 3.7 in the 140-mg group, versus 1.8 in the

placebo A placebo ( ) is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like saline), sham surgery, and other procedures. In general, placebos can af ...

(0-mg) group.

Society and culture

Economics

The list price was reported to be per year. In the United Kingdom, Erenumab was approved by the

Scottish Medicines Consortium Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) is the national healthcare improvement organisation for Scotland. It is a public body which is part of the Scottish National Health Service, created in April 2011. History NHS Quality Improvement Scotland ( ...

, but the

National Institute for Health and Care Excellence The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care in England that publishes guidelines in four areas: * the use of health technologies withi ...

rejected the drug on the basis that its cost-effectiveness was not sufficiently proven.

Legal status

The United States

approved the medication for the preventive treatment of migraine in adults in May 2018. It was the first CGRPR antagonist to be approved. It was approved for medical use in the European Union on July 26, 2018.

Names

Erenumab is the international nonproprietary name and the

United States Adopted Name A United States Adopted Name (USAN) is a unique nonproprietary name assigned to a medication marketed in the United States. Each name is assigned by the USAN Council, which is co-sponsored by the American Medical Association (AMA), the United Sta ...

References

External links

* {{Portal bar , Medicine Antimigraine drugs Calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor antagonists Monoclonal antibodies Amgen Novartis brands