Immunology and inflammation
Protagonist Therapeutics will now sit back and collect cash from the J&J partnership, including an immediate $50 million payment.
Icotyde, co-developed by Johnson & Johnson and Protagonist Therapeutics, is backed by data from the Phase 3 ICONIC program, which, among other advantages, showed significant superiority over Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu.
Sanofi will gain global exclusive rights over rovadicitinib, an oral JAK/ROCK blocker that has anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic effects.
Merck’s Keytruda will soon lose exclusivity, just as weight-loss giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk press in with their blockbuster GLP-1s.
On the FDA’s docket this month are two decisions pushed back from 2025, including one for a rare form of obesity and another for dry eye disease.
While Boehringer Ingelheim hasn’t yet revealed what diseases it will go after, Sitryx’s oral drug candidate could potentially be disease-modifying for a variety of autoimmune and inflammatory conditions.
CSL is advancing clazakizumab for the treatment of cardiovascular events in end-stage kidney disease and will retain rights over the asset in this indication. Lilly will explore other conditions.
Following the successful late-stage study in wet age-related macular degeneration, Ocular plans to meet with the FDA to determine a regulatory path for Axpaxli.
The percentage of patients achieving total clearance of eczema lesions in a Phase 2b trial increased with prolonged rezpeg treatment.
The newly public Evommune shared data showing that EVO301, an IL-18 targeting protein, cleared symptoms comparably to Regeneron and Sanofi’s mega-blockbuster in a mid-stage atopic dermatitis clinical trial.
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