Antilipidemic Drug Therapy Today and in the Future

The armamentarium for the treatment of dyslipidemia today comprises six different modes of action with overall around 24 different drugs. The treatment of lipid disorders was revolutionized with the introduction of statins which have become the most important therapeutic option available today to reduce and prevent atherosclerosis and its detrimental consequences like cardiovascular diseases and stroke. With and optimized reduction of elevated LDL levels with statins, the risk for cardiovascular diseases (CVD) can be reduced by 30%, indicating a residual remaining risk of 70% for the development and progression of CVD notifying still a high medical need for more effective antilipidemic drugs. Consequently, the search for novel lipid-modifying drugs is still one of the most active areas in research and development in the pharmaceutical industry. Major focus lies on approaches to LDL-lowering drugs superior to statins with regard to efficacy, safety, and patient compliance and on approaches modifying plasma levels and functionality of HDL particles based on the clinically validated inverse relationship between high-plasma HDL levels and the risk for CVD. The available drugs today for the treatment of dyslipidemia are small organic molecules or nonabsorbable polymers for binding of bile acids to be applied orally. Besides small molecules for novel targets, biological drugs such as monoclonal antibodies, antisense or gene-silencing oligonucleotides, peptidomimetics, reconstituted synthetic HDL particles and therapeutic proteins are novel approaches in clinical development are which have to be applied by injection or infusion. The promising clinical results of several novel drug candidates, particularly for LDL cholesterol lowering with monoclonal antibodies raised against PCSK9, may indicate more than a decade after the statins, the entrance of new breakthrough therapies to treat lipid disorders.