New pharmacological therapies for hypertension

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause for morbidity and mortality, and hypertension (HTN) remain the most important modifiable risk factor for CVD with poor control rates. All guidelines recommend lower blood pressure (BP) target that has made BP control rates in the community even worse. There is high unmet clinical need for novel therapies in HTN that could help achieve lower BP targets consistently across all patient subgroups.

There have not been many novel therapies successfully developed for HTN in the last 30 years. Successful therapies such as renal denervation (RDN) or endothelin receptor antagonist aprocetantan have major limitations (poor response rate with RDN, fluid retention and modest BP reduction with aprocetantan) that restricts their use in large cohorts. Novel therapies including RNAi Zilebesiran and aldosterone synthase inhibitors (lorundrostat and baxdrostat) have demonstrated efficacy and safety in large, robust randomized controlled trials with good safety/tolerability and clinically significant BP reduction consistent across all sub-groups.

Novel therapies (Zilebesiran, lorundrostat, baxdrostat) have shown great potential in lowering BP that is clinically meaningful to help improve cardiovascular and renal outcomes. ASI therapies lorundrostat and baxdrostat are close to being licensed for HTN. Once commercially available and recommended in treatment guidelines, the next big challenge will be reimbursement and implementation model in different healthcare systems.