The drug came to AstraZeneca through its acquisition of CinCor Pharma in 2023, with the hopes of beefing up its cardiovascular and kidney disease pipelines.
AstraZeneca’s $1.3 billion gamble on CinCor may be paying off, after baxdrostat, an aldosterone synthase inhibitor it got in the deal, achieved a “statistically significant and clinically meaningful” drop in blood pressure in a late-stage trial, according to a company press release Monday.
The results are from the Phase III BaxHTN trial, comparing patients with uncontrolled or treatment-resistant hypertension on two different doses—1 mg or 2 mg—to patients who received placebo. All patients either received baxdrostat or placebo on top of standard of care.
AstraZeneca originally took on baxdrostat via the $1.3 billion acquisition of CinCor Pharma in 2023. The deal also involved regulatory milestones involving baxdrostat that could kick the total value up to $1.8 billion—a gamble for shareholders as baxdrostat had flunked a previous Phase II trial run by CinCor after failing to reduce blood pressure in patients with uncontrolled hypertension. Data from a subgroup, however, kept hopes alive that the drug could address the condition.
AstraZeneca did not go into specific details of the results, only saying that both doses met the primary endpoint, which was the difference in seated systolic blood pressure (SBP) after 12 weeks. The trial also met secondary endpoints in specific patient subpopulations and other measures of hypertension. AstraZeneca said that the drug was “generally well tolerated with a favorable safety profile.”
AstraZeneca plans to reveal more details at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in August 2025.
Baxdrostat works by blocking aldosterone synthase, a protein responsible for synthesizing aldosterone, a steroid involved in sodium retention and maintaining homeostatic blood pressure in the body. AstraZeneca is also testing baxdrostat in a Phase III trial in combination with dapagliflozin for treating chronic kidney disease progression in patients with both kidney disease and high blood pressure.
Baxdrostat is part of a spate of drugs that AstraZeneca is hoping will help the company hit $80 billion in revenue by 2030, according to analysts at Leerink Partners, writing in a note to investors in April. Those also include ceralasertib, currently in a Phase I trial for solid tumors; gefurulimab for treating myasthenia gravis; and efzimfotase alfa, currently in Phase III trials for hypophosphatasia.
