Will Ab­b­Vie bite? De­ci­sion time af­ter Abl­ynx's rheuma­toid arthri­tis drug fails a key study

Abl­ynx has come to the cross­roads with Ab­b­Vie on their block­buster deal to de­vel­op a new IL-6 drug for rheuma­toid arthri­tis. And the Bel­gian biotech com­pa­ny has some ex­plain­ing to do.

This morn­ing Abl­ynx re­leased an­oth­er messy set of Phase IIb da­ta on vo­bar­il­izum­ab. Com­bined with methotrex­ate, the com­bi­na­tion of vo­bar­il­izum­ab and methotrex­ate failed on the pri­ma­ry end­point, un­able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­tin­guish it­self on most out­comes tied to the key mea­sure: An im­prove­ment of at least 20% on a dis­ease rat­ing score – ACR20 – af­ter 12 and 24 weeks of treat­ment. The drug even fell short on mea­sur­ing pa­tients’ abil­i­ty to func­tion bet­ter, with 71% in the methotrex­ate arm re­port­ing a clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful im­prove­ment in phys­i­cal func­tion com­pared to 65% tak­ing a com­bi­na­tion of vo­bar­il­izum­ab and methotrex­ate.

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