Bio­gen, Ab­b­Vie yank MS drug Zin­bry­ta off the mar­ket in the wake of en­cephali­tis cas­es

The mar­ket­ing ef­fort for the MS drug Zin­bry­ta (da­clizum­ab) im­plod­ed to­day af­ter Eu­ro­pean reg­u­la­tors flagged a lethal safe­ty warn­ing over cas­es of in­flam­ma­to­ry en­cephali­tis and menin­goen­cephali­tis. Bio­gen $BI­IB and Ab­b­Vie $AB­BV, which had been look­ing to spend this year build­ing sales of the MS treat­ment, are now yank­ing it off the mar­ket in the EU and the US.

“Giv­en the na­ture and com­plex­i­ty of ad­verse events be­ing re­port­ed, char­ac­ter­iz­ing the evolv­ing ben­e­fit/risk pro­file of Zin­bry­ta will not be pos­si­ble go­ing for­ward giv­en the lim­it­ed num­ber of pa­tients be­ing treat­ed,” the com­pa­nies said in a state­ment. “There­fore, Bio­gen and Ab­b­Vie be­lieve it is in the best in­ter­est of pa­tients to vol­un­tar­i­ly with­draw world­wide mar­ket­ing au­tho­riza­tions for Zin­bry­ta.”

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