The rem­e­dy for the most com­mon side ef­fect for one of the most com­mon mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis drugs is sim­ple: as­pirin.

Tak­ing as­pirin with Bio­gen’s Tec­fidera will re­duce the flush, a some­times painful form of red skin ir­ri­ta­tion, many pa­tients ex­pe­ri­ence. The prob­lem is that the as­pirin has to be tak­en at least 30 min­utes be­fore Tec­fidera, turn­ing a sim­ple twice-a-day, one-dose oral drug in­to a stag­gered two-drug reg­i­men.

Joseph Hab­boushe

Joseph Hab­boushe watched his fa­ther strug­gle with the same is­sue for high-dose niacin, a cho­les­terol treat­ment that al­so caused a flush that could be pre­vent­ed if you on­ly took as­pirin 30 min­utes to an hour be­fore.

“Most pa­tients, they just won’t do that,” Hab­boushe told End­points News. “It’s re­al­ly hard.”

So Hab­boushe, an ER doc, en­tre­pre­neur and aca­d­e­m­ic be­gan work­ing on a way to in­te­grate the two and come up with some­thing that would give as­pirin’s an­ti-flush ef­fect at the same time a pa­tient took the main med­i­cine. He filed his first patent in 2012, and to­day he’s of­fi­cial­ly an­nounc­ing the com­pa­ny: Vi­tal­is Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

In­for­ma­tion is scant on Vi­tal­is. The com­pa­ny has not dis­closed its in­vestors or how much mon­ey they have, and aside from an 18-per­son pi­lot study that found a 63% flush re­duc­tion, there’s lit­tle da­ta to back them up. De­spite that, they’re aim­ing to hit the mar­ket in 2021.

They have sev­er­al can­di­dates — in­clud­ing ones for non-opi­oid pain and dys­lipi­demia — but their main pitch is around Tec­fidera, the pill that earned Bio­gen over $4 bil­lion last year. Hab­boushe said that while he be­gan by try­ing to find a way of ward­ing off flush, he emerged with a pill he claims can not on­ly re­duce flush but al­so has bet­ter phar­ma­co­ki­net­ic prop­er­ties and can get around Bio­gen’s patents.

The fu­ture of Tec­fidera — which fast beaome the num­ber-one sell­ing MS pill in the US af­ter its ap­proval in 2013 — is cloud­ed by com­peti­tors and a heat­ed patent dis­pute.

Bio­gen’s patents are slat­ed to ful­ly ex­pire in 2028, but sev­er­al com­pa­nies have al­ready chal­lenged that, hop­ing to void it ear­li­er. Most no­tably, My­lan is in the midst of a court case to void the patent on the ba­sis of ob­vi­ous­ness, and in 2017, Bio­gen paid $28 mil­lion and promised more in mile­stones to Alk­er­mes to buy­out their chal­lenge.

Any change in the patent out­look would be con­se­quen­tial — both for Bio­gen and for any de­vel­op­er able to then en­ter the mar­ket. Af­ter Bio­gen dis­closed the My­lan threat in Feb­ru­ary, Leerink an­a­lyst Ge­of­frey Porges wrote that a 2020 patent ex­pi­ra­tion would be worth 10-15% Bio­gen’s val­ue.

So­cial im­age: Joseph Hab­boushe, NYU Lan­gone Health

The FDA’s Arthritis Advisory Committee on Thursday voted 10 for and 8 against the approval of ChemoCentryx’s $CCXI investigational drug avacopan as a treatment for adults with a rare and serious disease known as anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-vasculitis.

The vote on whether the FDA should approve the drug was preceded by a split vote of 9 to 9 on whether the efficacy data support approval, and 10 to 8 that the safety profile of avacopan is adequate enough to support approval.

Most deals in biotech come with hefty upfront payments attached, and the promise of big biobucks if a program works out. Not this one.

Nkarta has struck what CEO Paul Hastings calls a “real collaboration” with CRISPR Therapeutics to co-develop and commercialize two CAR-NK therapies, in addition to an NK+T program. The duo will split all R&D costs — and any worldwide profits — 50/50, Hastings said.

As if Biogen’s aducanumab isn’t controversial enough, the researchers at drug pricing watchdog ICER have drawn up the contours of a new debate: If the therapy does get approved for Alzheimer’s by June, what price should it command?

Their answer: At most $8,290 per year — and perhaps as little as $2,560.

Even at the top of the range, the proposed price is a fraction of the $50,000 that Wall Street has reportedly come to expect (although RBC analyst Brian Abrahams puts the consensus figure at $11.5K). With critics, including experts on the FDA’s advisory committee, making their fierce opposition to aducanumab’s approval loud and clear, the pricing pressure adds one extra wrinkle Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos doesn’t need as he orders full-steam preparation for a launch.