Lu­pus drug de­vel­op­ment mar­ket heat­ing up, while FDA links with ad­vo­ca­cy group to fur­ther ac­cel­er­ate re­search

The long-un­der­served sys­temic lu­pus ery­the­mato­sus (SLE) mar­ket is sud­den­ly buzzing with treat­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties. Less than two years af­ter As­traZeneca’s ap­proval for Saph­ne­lo — the first new SLE drug in a decade and join­ing just one oth­er ap­proved in GSK’s Benlysta – the pipeline of po­ten­tial drugs num­bers in the dozens.

Al­though most are very ear­ly stage — Spher­ix Glob­al In­sights es­ti­mates five in Phase II/III — the phar­ma R&D en­thu­si­asm is catch­ing on among doc­tors, pa­tients and ad­vo­ca­cy groups. On Wednes­day, the Lu­pus Re­search Al­liance and the FDA formed a nov­el pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship called Lu­pus Ac­cel­er­at­ing Break­throughs Con­sor­tium (Lu­pus ABC) to help ad­vance lu­pus clin­i­cal tri­al suc­cess.

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