Lil­ly’s mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body, Taltz, which is al­ready ap­proved for pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis and plaque pso­ri­a­sis has won its third ap­proval. The FDA has cleared its use in ac­tive anky­los­ing spondyli­tis (AS), a chron­ic in­flam­ma­to­ry rheumat­ic dis­or­der that af­fects the pelvic joints and spine, and can be char­ac­ter­ized by in­flam­ma­to­ry back pain, stiff­ness and im­paired func­tion and mo­bil­i­ty.

Taltz — akin to No­var­tis’ $NVS block­buster Cosen­tyx — in­hibits IL-17A, a cy­tokine in­volved in in­flam­ma­to­ry and im­mune re­spons­es. The drug, which will now al­so ad­dress the rough­ly 1.6 mil­lion Amer­i­cans with AS, gen­er­at­ed about $354 mil­lion in the sec­ond quar­ter.

Taltz was test­ed in two place­bo-con­trolled Phase III stud­ies that en­com­passed 657 AS pa­tients to eval­u­ate the pro­por­tion of pa­tients the drug had an im­pact on, in terms of symp­toms of pain, in­flam­ma­tion and func­tion at 16 weeks. In the COAST-V tri­al, which in­clud­ed pa­tients who had nev­er been treat­ed with an an­tirheumat­ic bi­o­log­ic, 48% of Taltz-treat­ed pa­tients achieved the re­sponse every four weeks ver­sus 18% of place­bo-treat­ed pa­tients (p<0.0001). In COAST-W tri­al, which in­volved pa­tients who did not ad­e­quate­ly ben­e­fit or were in­tol­er­ant to tu­mor necro­sis fac­tor (TNF) in­hibitors, 25% of pa­tients treat­ed with Taltz every four weeks achieved a re­sponse, ver­sus 13% of pa­tients giv­en the place­bo (p<0.05).

Four months ago, Lil­ly’s $LLY Taltz al­so cleared a late-stage study called COAST-X, in pa­tients with a form of in­flam­ma­to­ry arthri­tis in which there is no vis­i­ble ev­i­dence of dam­age on X-rays — non-ra­di­ograph­ic ax­i­al spondy­loarthri­tis (nr-AxS­pA).

Cosen­tyx is al­so ap­proved for AS, as is UCB’s TNF block­er Cimzia.

Following the Supreme Court’s historic decision on Friday to overturn Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, Attorney General Merrick Garland sought to somewhat reassure women that states will not be able to ban the prescription drug sometimes used for abortions.

Following the decision, the New England Journal of Medicine also published an editorial strongly condemning the reversal, saying it “serves American families poorly, putting their health, safety, finances, and futures at risk.”

Despite whispers of a busy year for M&A, deal activity in the pharma space is actually down 30% on a semi-annualized basis, according to PwC’s latest report on deal activity. But don’t rule out larger deals in the second half of the year, the consultants said.

PwC pharmaceutical and life sciences consulting solutions leader Glenn Hunzinger expects to see Big Pharma companies picking up earlier stage companies to try and fill pipeline gaps ahead of a slew of big patent cliffs. Though a bear market continues to maul the biotech sector, Hunzinger said recent deals indicate that pharma companies are still paying above current trading prices.

The story of Amryt Pharma’s candidate for the genetic skin condition epidermolysis bullosa, or EB, will soon enter another chapter.

After the Irish drugmaker’s candidate, dubbed Oleogel-S10 and marketed as Filsuvez, was handed a CRL earlier this year, the company announced in a press release that it plans to submit a formal dispute resolution request for the company’s NDA for Oleogel-S10.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis made a name for himself in the 2020 election cycle as the darling of the pharma industry, accepting hundreds of thousands in campaign contributions, even from the likes of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

Those contributions have led Tillis to attempt to re-write patent laws in pharma’s favor, a move which failed to gain steam in 2019, and request for a third time since January that the FDA should help stop “the false narrative that patent protections are to blame for high drug prices.”