Af­ter a post-mar­ket­ing tri­al for Pfiz­er’s Xel­janz turned up con­cern­ing safe­ty re­sults at the be­gin­ning of the year, thwart­ing the whole JAK class, the FDA is fi­nal­ly rolling out some new ap­provals — but with added warn­ings and a key la­bel change.

Both Xel­janz and Ab­b­Vie’s Rin­voq got cleared for new in­di­ca­tions on Tues­day, but on one con­di­tion: They can on­ly be tak­en af­ter a pa­tient has failed on one or more tu­mor necro­sis fac­tor (TNF) block­ers, like Hu­mi­ra or En­brel.

Ear­li­er this month, the FDA slapped boxed warn­ings on the la­bels of Xel­janz, Rin­voq and Eli Lil­ly’s Olu­mi­ant, flag­ging the risk of car­dio­vas­cu­lar events such as heart at­tack or stroke in high-risk pa­tients who are 50 years and old­er, es­pe­cial­ly those with oth­er risk fac­tors such as cur­rent or past smok­ers.

Xel­janz is now ap­proved for adults with ac­tive anky­los­ing spondyli­tis, a rare type of arthri­tis that caus­es pain and stiff­ness in the spine. And Rin­voq pulled a win in adults with ac­tive pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis, a type of in­flam­ma­to­ry arthri­tis that caus­es joint pain, stiff­ness and swelling.

The lat­est fall­out over JAK safe­ty be­gan back in Jan­u­ary, when Xel­janz failed a six-year post-mar­ket­ing safe­ty study across 4,362 rheuma­toid arthri­tis pa­tients. Re­searchers found that those who re­ceived ei­ther a low or high dose of Xel­janz ex­pe­ri­enced more ma­jor car­dio­vas­cu­lar events — such as stroke and heart at­tack — than those on Hu­mi­ra or En­brel. They al­so had high­er rates of can­cer, with Pfiz­er fail­ing to hit non-in­fe­ri­or­i­ty on both pri­ma­ry end­points.

The study re­newed some dif­fi­cult ques­tions for JAK in­hibitors more broad­ly, a class that gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant ef­fi­ca­cy in au­toim­mune con­di­tions but faced re­peat­ed safe­ty con­cerns.

In the first week of De­cem­ber, the FDA con­clud­ed that there’s an in­creased risk of se­ri­ous heart-re­lat­ed events such as heart at­tack or stroke, can­cer, blood clots and death as­so­ci­at­ed with Xel­janz, and put up­dat­ed warn­ings on that drug and two oth­ers. Al­though Olu­mi­ant and Rin­voq hadn’t been stud­ied in large safe­ty tri­als, reg­u­la­tors de­cid­ed that they may pose sim­i­lar risks, as they share the same mech­a­nism of ac­tion.

In­vestors were mut­ed on the news of Ab­b­Vie and Pfiz­er’s new ap­provals, with the com­pa­ny’s stock, $AB­BV and $PFE, up about 1% in pre-mar­ket trad­ing on Tues­day.

The Xel­janz ap­proval is based on da­ta from a Phase III tri­al, show­ing that twice-dai­ly 5 mg dos­es of the block­buster drug helped 56.4% of pa­tients achieve an im­prove­ment of at least 20% on the As­sess­ment in Spondy­loArthri­tis in­ter­na­tion­al So­ci­ety scale (ASAS20), com­pared to just 29.4% of place­bo pa­tients (p<0.0001).

Just over 40% of pa­tients on Xel­janz achieved an ASAS40 re­sponse, com­pared to 12.5% on place­bo, ac­cord­ing to Pfiz­er. The safe­ty pro­file was sim­i­lar to that in ap­proved in­di­ca­tions of rheuma­toid arthri­tis and pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis, the com­pa­ny said.

Mean­while, Rin­voq helped pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis pa­tients treat­ed with 15 mg dos­es achieve high­er ACR50 re­spons­es (an im­prove­ment of at least 50% on the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Rheuma­tol­ogy scale) com­pared to place­bo in two Phase III tri­als. In the tri­als, 38% and 32% of pa­tients on Rin­voq achieved ACR50, com­pared to 13% and 5% on place­bo, re­spec­tive­ly.

The Rin­voq arms al­so boast­ed 16% and 9% ACR70 re­spons­es, com­pared to 2% and 1% in the place­bo arms, re­spec­tive­ly. And the drug was seen to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­hib­it the pro­gres­sion of struc­tur­al joint dam­age com­pared to place­bo, ac­cord­ing to Ab­b­Vie. The com­pa­ny said Rin­voq’s safe­ty pro­file was con­sis­tent with that in pa­tients with rheuma­toid arthri­tis.

Now, we’ll wait to see if the added warn­ings af­fect the drugs’ per­for­mances. Xel­janz pulled in $2.4 bil­lion in 2020, and Rin­voq was a bit be­hind it with $731 mil­lion in net sales.

In a first for 2022, the FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion has issued an untitled letter, which was recently sent to Eli Lilly over what the agency calls a “misleading” and “particularly concerning” Instagram ad the company posted for its type 2 diabetes drug Trulicity.

The questionable Instagram post, which has since been deleted by Lilly, failed to adequately communicate the indication and limitations of use associated with Trulicity, FDA says.

Two monoclonal antibody combos from Eli Lilly and Regeneron are no longer authorized in the US, and shipments to states have ceased because HHS said they are “highly unlikely” to work against the sweeping new variant Omicron.

The move by the FDA comes as states like Florida have become insistent that the mAbs need to be independently evaluated, although the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which has shipped hundreds of thousands of these two mAbs to states in recent weeks, did not ship any this week.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying so hard to politicize the FDA and demonize the federal government that he entered into an alternate universe on Monday evening in describing a recent FDA action to restrict the use of two monoclonal antibody, or mAb, treatments for Covid-19 that don’t work against Omicron.

Without further ado, let’s break down his statement from last night, line by line, adjective by adjective.