The current landscape of factor XI inhibitors

Abstract

Anticoagulant therapy has always been tightly connected with bleeding risk, as two sides of the same coin. New insights in thrombosis and hemostasis prompted the development of intrinsic pathway inhibitors that promise to uncouple thrombosis and hemostasis. Treating and preventing thrombotic complications without the associated bleeding risk opens up many new possibilities for patients with an unmet need with the current anticoagulant drugs. Many candidate drugs are being investigated in phase I, II, and III clinical trials. In this review, we will introduce the new insights driving this evolution in drug development, whereafter the drugs under development and their clinical trials will be discussed.

Keywords

• Thrombosis
• Hemostasis
• FXI inhibitors
• Intrinsic pathway