As head-to-head with Alex­ion heats up, No­var­tis flash­es da­ta for next wave of tri­als for star kid­ney mol­e­cule

No­var­tis has rarely in­vest­ed much in kid­ney drugs, but over the last cou­ple of years, they’ve tried to build a pipeline out of a sin­gle drug.

On Sun­day, that drug, a small mol­e­cule called ip­ta­co­pan, de­liv­ered an­oth­er suc­cess. No­var­tis an­nounced that it cleared a Phase II tri­al for the rare kid­ney dis­ease IgA nephropa­thy, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing a risk fac­tor for kid­ney health. The da­ta bur­nish the Swiss phar­ma’s con­fi­dence in a piv­otal Phase III study al­ready un­der­way in the con­di­tion, along with the mid- or late-stage stud­ies they’ve launched in a hand­ful of un­com­mon re­nal af­flic­tions.

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