Ab­b­Vie gets its FDA OK for JAK in­hibitor upadac­i­tinib, but don’t look for this one to hit ex­ecs’ lofty ex­pec­ta­tions

An­oth­er big drug ap­proval came through on Fri­day af­ter­noon as the FDA OK’d Ab­b­Vie’s upadac­i­tinib — an oral JAK1 in­hibitor that is hit­ting the rheuma­toid arthri­tis mar­ket with a black box warn­ing of se­ri­ous ma­lig­nan­cies, in­fec­tions and throm­bo­sis re­flect­ing fears as­so­ci­at­ed with the class.

It will be sold as Rin­voq — at a whole­sale price of $59,000 a year — and will like­ly soon face com­pe­ti­tion from a drug that Ab­b­Vie once con­trolled, and spurned. Reuters re­ports that a 4-week sup­ply of Hu­mi­ra, by com­par­i­son, is $5,174, adding up to about $67,000 a year.

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