Roche, Alex­ion ripe for show­down in a race to treat rare CNS dis­or­der

Months af­ter Alex­ion’s $ALXN flag­ship Soliris en­thralled in­vestors with im­pres­sive piv­otal da­ta for pa­tients with neu­romyelitis op­ti­ca spec­trum dis­or­der (NM­SOD), re­searchers at Roche’s Chugai on Wednes­day re­port­ed pos­i­tive Phase III da­ta test­ing its drug, satral­izum­ab, as a monother­a­py in the same pa­tient pop­u­la­tion.

There are no treat­ments ap­proved specif­i­cal­ly for the rare dis­or­der, which is of­ten con­fused with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis as the im­mune sys­tem at­tacks its host, dam­ag­ing healthy tis­sue in the spine and eyes. Pa­tients fre­quent­ly ex­pe­ri­ence a re­laps­ing dis­ease course with re­peat­ed at­tacks lead­ing to ac­cu­mu­lat­ed neu­ro­log­i­cal dam­age and dis­abil­i­ty and, some­times, even death.

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