Jazz gets its nar­colep­sy up­grade drug decked out for the FDA as clock ticks down on cash cow patents

Jazz Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $JAZZ ap­pears to be rid­ing its fol­low-up nar­colep­sy drug to a near-term ap­proval — just ahead of the gener­ic com­pe­ti­tion like­ly to eat up the fran­chise.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors turned up at the World Sleep Con­gress to out­line up­dat­ed Phase III da­ta on JZP-258, with an ef­fi­ca­cy and tol­er­a­bil­i­ty pro­file that looks re­mark­ably sim­i­lar to the block­buster that sus­tains the com­pa­ny. An­a­lysts were par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in track­ing a sim­i­lar rate of cat­a­plexy — un­con­trol­lable mus­cle weak­ness or paral­y­sis — for pa­tients who tran­si­tioned from their mar­ket­ed drug Xyrem (sodi­um oxy­bate) to the fol­low-up.

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