Ab­b­Vie’s promised rheuma­toid arthri­tis block­buster upadac­i­tinib hits its marks in an­oth­er PhI­II — this time with­out any deaths

Ab­b­Vie $AB­BV has post­ed an­oth­er pos­i­tive batch of Phase III da­ta on its JAK1 in­hibitor upadac­i­tinib, hit­ting the pri­ma­ry and key sec­ondary end­points in their piv­otal pro­gram for rheuma­toid arthri­tis. And this round of da­ta comes with­out any new deaths in the drug arm to rat­tle in­vestors and an­a­lysts.

Their drug — for­mer­ly ABT-494 — hand­i­ly outscored a place­bo, which was not un­ex­pect­ed. The ther­a­py bare­ly edged out Hu­mi­ra on ACR 20 at 12 weeks, but did much bet­ter on a range of end­points like ACR50 (45% ver­sus 29%) and clin­i­cal re­mis­sion rates (29% ver­sus 18%). On­ly 6% of the place­bo arm ex­pe­ri­enced clin­i­cal re­mis­sion.

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