Risdiplam: A Review in Spinal Muscular Atrophy

Declarations

Funding The preparation of this review was not supported by any external funding.

Authorship and Conflict of interest Julia Paik is a salaried employee of Adis International Ltd/Springer Nature, and declares no relevant conflicts of interest. All authors contributed to the review and are responsible for the article content.

Ethics approval, Consent to participate, Consent to publish, Availability of data and material, Code availability not applicable

Additional information about this Adis Drug Review can be found here

Abstract

Risdiplam (Evrysdi^®) is the first oral drug developed to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and is approved in multiple countries worldwide. It is approved for the treatment of SMA in patients aged ≥ 2 months in the USA and the EU, with this approval further specified in the EU for the treatment of 5q-autosomal recessive SMA with a clinical diagnosis of SMA types 1, 2, or 3 or with one to four survival motor neuron 2 (SMN2) copies. As an SMN2 pre-mRNA splicing modifier, risdiplam increases the production of full-length SMN protein, the lack of which drives the pathophysiology of SMA. In phase 2/3 clinical trials, risdiplam significantly improved motor function in infants with SMA type 1 and in patients aged 2–25 years with SMA types 2 or 3. These motor improvements were maintained with up to 2 years of treatment with risdiplam. Risdiplam had a generally acceptable tolerability profile in these trials. As an oral drug, risdiplam provides a convenient and useful treatment option across a broad range of patient ages and subtypes of SMA.

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