Boehringer In­gel­heim un­corked some pos­i­tive re­sults sug­gest­ing that Spe­vi­go can help pre­vent flare-ups in pa­tients with a se­vere form of pso­ri­a­sis, months af­ter the drug was ap­proved to treat ex­ist­ing flares.

Spe­vi­go, an IL-36R an­ti­body al­so known as spesolimab, met its pri­ma­ry and a key sec­ondary end­point in the Phase IIb EFF­ISAY­IL 2 tri­al in pa­tients with gen­er­al­ized pus­tu­lar pso­ri­a­sis (GPP), Boehringer an­nounced on Mon­day. While the com­pa­ny is keep­ing the hard num­bers un­der wraps un­til lat­er this year, it said in a news re­lease that it an­tic­i­pates shar­ing the re­sults with reg­u­la­tors.

“Painful GPP flares can oc­cur sud­den­ly, es­ca­late quick­ly, and may re­quire ur­gent hos­pi­tal care leav­ing peo­ple anx­ious and un­cer­tain about what the fu­ture might hold,” Carinne Brouil­lon, a mem­ber of the com­pa­ny’s board of man­ag­ing di­rec­tors re­spon­si­ble for the Hu­man Phar­ma Busi­ness Unit, said in the news re­lease.  The com­pa­ny was not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able for com­ment.

GPP is the rarest form of pso­ri­a­sis, and is char­ac­ter­ized by red and in­flamed patch­es of skin, as well as small pus­tules. The con­di­tion is some­times mis­tak­en for an in­fec­tion, and un­til Spe­vi­go’s ap­proval back in Sep­tem­ber, there were no drugs of­fi­cial­ly ap­proved to treat it. In se­ri­ous cas­es, the con­di­tion can lead to heart fail­ure, re­nal fail­ure and sep­sis.

While most pa­tients en­rolled in a Phase II piv­otal tri­al had a “high or very high” den­si­ty of pus­tules, 54% showed no vis­i­ble pus­tules af­ter a week of treat­ment with Spe­vi­go, com­pared to 6% of those on a place­bo, ac­cord­ing to Boehringer.

The EFF­ISAY­IL 2 tri­al showed a “sig­nif­i­cant pre­ven­tion of gen­er­al­ized pus­tu­lar pso­ri­a­sis (GPP) flares for up to 48 weeks” in ado­les­cents and adults, the com­pa­ny said on Mon­day.

Anap­tys­Bio is de­vel­op­ing its own IL-36R an­ti­body, im­si­dolimab, for the same in­di­ca­tion, though it said last year that it would look to out-li­cense the can­di­date be­fore a po­ten­tial FDA ap­proval. Ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web­site, topline da­ta are ex­pect­ed in the fourth quar­ter of this year.

The mRNA player Moderna is further cementing its presence on the African continent.

Moderna announced on Thursday that it has finalized an agreement with Kenya’s government to partner up and bring an mRNA manufacturing facility to the east African nation. The new facility aims to manufacture up to 500 million doses of vaccines annually. Moderna also said the new facility will have the ability to spike its production capabilities to respond to public health emergencies on the continent or globally.

Thermo Fisher Scientific is putting down more roots in the Bay Area.

The manufacturer opened the doors to a new cell therapy manufacturing facility next to the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center’s Mission Bay campus and on the university’s campus.

UCSF and Thermo Fisher have had a partnership since 2021, with the new site focusing on manufacturing cell therapeutics for certain cancers, including glioblastoma and multiple myeloma. The new site plans to use Thermo Fisher’s expertise in manufacturing services to help UCSF accelerate the development of cell therapies and eventually get them into the clinic, said Dan Herring, the general manager of cell therapy services at Thermo Fisher, in an interview with Endpoints News.

Dallas-based biotech Nanoscope Therapeutics unveiled Phase II results on its gene therapy for a rare eye disease Thursday morning.

In the RESTORE trial, 18 patients with retinitis pigmentosa got a gene therapy called MCO-010 while nine got placebo. On a vision test called the MLYMT, the treatment group had a one-point greater change over one year in their score compared to the placebo group, the primary endpoint of the study. However, the 95% confidence interval was 0.0 to 3.0, meaning the result was not statistically significant. The p-value was not provided.

Catalent will be manufacturing a low-cost version of the opioid overdose treatment naloxone as part of a contract with Harm Reduction Therapeutics.

Catalent plans to manufacture the treatment at its facility in Morrisville, NC. No financial details on the deal were disclosed.

Harm Reduction was granted priority review status for the NDA on its spray last year. The company has been working on a naloxone product since 2017. It is anticipating approval in July of this year and a US launch in early 2024.

Belgian biotech Confo Therapeutics has landed $183 million, plus potential royalties, in a drug-discovery deal with Daiichi Sankyo.

Early Thursday, Confo Therapeutics put out word of the deal that will be focused on small molecule antagonists to go after an undisclosed target that the company says is associated with CNS diseases.

Confo CEO Cedric Ververken told Endpoints News that Daiichi originally reached out to learn about the biotech’s technology. He added that Confo, founded in 2015, will use its platform to drug a GPCR target that Daiichi has struggled with internally.

Paul McKenzie took over as CEO of Australian pharma giant CSL this month, following in the footsteps of long-time CSL vet Paul Perreault.

With an eye on mRNA, and quickly commercializing its new, $3.5 million-per-shot gene therapy for hemophilia B, McKenzie and chief medical officer Bill Mezzanotte answered some questions from Endpoints News this afternoon about where McKenzie is going to take the company and what advances may be coming to market from CSL’s pipeline. Below is a lightly edited transcript.