By Adam Clark

AstraZeneca PLC (AZN.LN) said Monday that the U.S. Food & Drug Administration has granted orphan drug designation for potential lung-disease treatment saracatinib.

The drug company said saracatinib has completed phase 1 development as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic and normally fatal disease that affects around 100,000 people in the U.S.

"IPF is a recent addition to our respiratory research strategy and we are interested to see whether saracatinib could be a useful approach for the treatment of this intractable disease," Mene Pangalos, executive vice-president at AstraZeneca, said.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@dowjones.com; @AdamDowJones

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 18, 2019 03:23 ET (07:23 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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