Alex­ion has scored an ad­di­tion­al FDA OK for its key­stone rare ther­a­py Soliris, un­lock­ing what a key an­a­lyst calls a sig­nif­i­cant part of its C5 fran­chise and el­e­vat­ing that port­fo­lio fur­ther up the block­buster ranks.

The drug is now ap­proved to treat neu­romyelitis op­ti­ca spec­trum dis­or­der, a rare au­toim­mune con­di­tion char­ac­ter­ized by sud­den at­tacks on the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. The dis­ease of­ten strikes women in their 30s and 40s, and could be con­fused with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis. While off-la­bel Rit­ux­an helps most pa­tients — ap­prox­i­mate­ly 70% — keep the dis­ease at bay, re­laps­es still threat­en to do ir­re­versible harm and cause se­vere dis­abil­i­ty to those for whom the stan­dard of care doesn’t work.

Ge­of­frey Porges

In a Phase III test­ing the drug in pa­tients who had mul­ti­ple re­laps­es de­spite pri­or im­muno-sup­pres­sive ther­a­pies, Soliris re­duced the risk of NMOSD re­lapse by 94.2% com­pared to place­bo (p<0.0001) — a stel­lar re­sult. And in the lat­est da­ta cut at 144 weeks, 96% of the Soliris group didn’t ex­pe­ri­ence an at­tack, com­pared to 45% of pa­tients in the place­bo arm who re­mained re­lapse-free.

No­tably, reg­u­la­tors did not lim­it Soliris’ use to non-re­spon­ders, of­fer­ing a blan­ket la­bel that cov­ers any pa­tient with an­ti-aqua­por­in-4 an­ti­bod­ies — which is be­lieved to ac­ti­vate the com­ple­ment sys­tem that Soliris in­hibits.

That sur­prised SVB Leerink’s George Porges, a big cheer­leader of the drug, but he is care­ful to note that a broad­er la­bel does not guar­an­tee a broad­er pa­tient pop­u­la­tion.

De­spite the la­bel, we don’t think Soliris will cap­ture sig­nif­i­cant use in front line treat­ment giv­en Rit­ux­an’s fa­vor­able cost-ben­e­fit pro­file (~70% dis­ease con­trol un­der Rit­ux­an and ~$60K first year cost com­pared ~$700K first year cost for Soliris). We ex­pect most in­sur­ance pay­ers to re­quire ev­i­dence of Rit­ux­an fail­ure be­fore re­im­burs­ing for Soliris in this dis­ease, but do ex­pect rel­a­tive­ly open ac­cess to Soliris for re­lapsed pa­tients in late line treat­ment.

He notes that Alex­ion is soon start­ing a Phase III tri­al in the same in­di­ca­tion for Ul­tomiris, its fol­lowup to Soliris that’s eas­i­er to use. By his es­ti­mates, be­tween the two drugs the NMOSD sales alone will bring in around $1 bil­lion in 2028, rep­re­sent­ing one-fifth of the to­tal C5 fran­chise that year.

As far as com­pe­ti­tion goes, Roche and its Chugai sub­sidiary has some Phase III da­ta to show for its IL-6 in­hibitor satral­izum­ab. As­traZeneca spin­out Viela Bio is fast on its heels with the CD-19 in­hibitor inebi­lizum­ab. But with no di­rect ri­val in the C5 class, Porges sees Soliris cap­tur­ing the dom­i­nant share in re­lapse cas­es.

For Alex­ion’s part, R&D chief John Orloff is hap­py to high­light the fact that Soliris is the first drug ap­proved to re­duce the risk of NMOSD re­lapse. Re­views in Eu­rope and Japan are on­go­ing.

By Natasha Cowan, Content Marketing Manager at Blue Latitude Health.
Many stakeholders are confused by novel precision medicines, including patients and healthcare professionals. So, how can industry help them to navigate this complexity?

Precision medicine represents a new paradigm in healthcare. It embodies the shift from treating many patients with the same therapy, to having the tools to identify the best treatment for every patient.

The FDA has placed a hold on a Phase II AML trial from the small immuno-oncology biotech Marker Therapeutics. Marker disclosed the issue two weeks after responding to FDA concerns, adding it to the Q3 release Tuesday. The company also announced it was scrapping a Phase II ovarian cancer program it determined was unlikely to succeed.

The agency’s concern centers around two reagents used in manufacturing for their trial for acute myeloid leukemia patients who have received a stem cell transplant. The reagents are from third parties and not present in the final product, Marker said.

Hold up your hand. Make a fist. Now open it. And again.

If you can do it fully and with ease, then the proteins in your hand are likely working properly. If you can’t then they may not be. In people with myotonic muscular dystrophy, something more atomic is going on.

In those folks, the problem is RNA. Certain base pairs repeat far beyond normal, up to 11,000 superfluous letters in some cases. The extended strands form “clumps.” Proteins misform and can’t function properly. They often allow one movement but not the reverse, a condition called myotonia that gives the dystrophy its name.

After fumbling in its first late-stage lupus study, AstraZeneca disclosed that a second pivotal trial testing its experimental drug, anifrolumab, had met the main goal, in August. Earlier this week, the British drugmaker broke out the numbers from its successful study.

Last year, anifrolumab failed to meet the main goal of diminishing disease activity in the 460-patient TULIP I study, a 52-week trial that tested two doses of the drug versus a placebo. But in the 373-patient TULIP II study, the higher dose (300 mg) was compared to patients given a placebo — patients in both arms were on baseline standard care.