The Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny’s first piv­otal Phase III re­sults for in­clisir­an are in, and the biotech can’t wait to high­light the cho­les­terol-low­er­ing po­ten­tial of its long-act­ing drug.

Mark Tim­ney

Ahead of a da­ta pre­sen­ta­tion of ORI­ON-11 at next week’s Eu­ro­pean So­ci­ety of Car­di­ol­o­gy, The Med­i­cines Com­pa­ny is putting out word that in­clisir­an — an RNAi ther­a­peu­tic li­censed from Al­ny­lam that works by pre­vent­ing PC­SK9 from be­ing syn­the­sized in the liv­er — met all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary end­points. The ef­fi­ca­cy was “con­sis­tent with find­ings from Phase 1 and 2 stud­ies” and the safe­ty pro­file was “at least as fa­vor­able” as in pre­vi­ous Phase II stud­ies.

Baird’s Mad­hu Ku­mar added that in speak­ing with man­age­ment, the re­sults were “con­sis­tent with mod­el­ing work pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed to rep­re­sent a 50%-55% re­duc­tion in LDL-C” — though he em­pha­sized da­ta at the ESC will be need­ed to con­firm a win here.

Mean­while, Umer Raf­fat of Ever­core ISI ze­roed in on the claim about a clean safe­ty pro­file, which was “by and far the biggest is­sue” head­ing in­to Phase III, call­ing the topline re­sults pos­si­bly “the sin­gle most im­por­tant piece of val­i­da­tion for RNAi safe­ty.”

Shares $MD­CO rose 12.79% to $38.03 pre-mar­ket.

Pa­tients who have com­plet­ed ORI­ON-11 will now join co­horts from ORI­ON-9 and -10 for ORI­ON-8, an open-la­bel ex­ten­sion study to eval­u­ate the dos­ing of in­clisir­an over three years.

ORI­ON-11 and -10 both en­rolled pa­tients with ath­er­o­scle­rot­ic car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and el­e­vat­ed LDL cho­les­terol de­spite statin ther­a­py; the for­mer was con­duct­ed in sev­en coun­tries ex-US while the lat­ter took place in the US. The re­sults for ORI­ON-10 as well as -9 — which tar­get pa­tients with het­erozy­gous fa­mil­ial hy­per­c­ho­les­terolemia — are ex­pect­ed lat­er this quar­ter.

That bulky da­ta pack­age — with each tri­al in­volv­ing more than a thou­sand pa­tients — will be sent to the FDA by the end of this year and to the EMA in Q1 2020.

The da­ta pre­sen­ta­tion at ESC can al­so bode well for Al­ny­lam $AL­NY, Mani Foroohar of SVB Leerink not­ed, es­pe­cial­ly with re­gards to ap­ply­ing its GalNAc-con­ju­gat­ed RNAi plat­form in large pop­u­la­tion, pri­ma­ry care in­di­ca­tions.

While mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies from Re­gen­eron/Sanofi and Am­gen have beat in­clisir­an to the mar­ket, Baird an­a­lysts have pre­dict­ed the drug will be “as­cend­ing the Iron Throne of PC­SK9 drugs” due most­ly to its dos­ing sched­ule. Un­like Pralu­ent and Repatha, which are ad­min­is­tered month­ly or twice-month­ly, in­clisir­an can be giv­en just twice a year af­ter an ini­tial in­ter­val of three months.

“We be­lieve this dos­ing sched­ule is at­trac­tive to pa­tients and can im­prove ad­her­ence, since cur­rent­ly on­ly 55-60% pa­tients are com­pli­ant on PC­SK9 Ab ther­a­py,” Jef­feries an­a­lysts have not­ed.

No­tably, ORI­ON-11 ex­clud­ed pa­tients with ac­tive liv­er dis­ease, which the com­pa­ny said is “not un­com­mon for stud­ies of dys­lipi­demia med­ica­tions.” While a case of liv­er en­zyme el­e­va­tion cropped up in Phase II, it was deemed un­re­lat­ed to the drug. Re­cent stud­ies com­pris­ing re­nal­ly im­paired pa­tients al­so sug­gest­ed in­clisir­an is safe for that group, and that they do not re­quire dose ad­just­ment.

“This is a mo­men­tous oc­ca­sion that fur­ther re­in­forces our con­fi­dence in the tremen­dous po­ten­tial of in­clisir­an to fun­da­men­tal­ly change the treat­ment of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease,” said CEO Mark Tim­ney, who suc­ceed­ed long­time chief Clive Mean­well in De­cem­ber 2018.

Zoom can only go so far. And I think at this stage, we’ve all tested the limits of staying in touch — virtually. So I’m particularly happy now that we’ve revved up the travel machine to point myself to London for the first time in several years.

Whatever events we have lined up, we’ve always built in plenty of opportunities for all of us to get together and talk. For London, live, I plan to be right out front, meeting with and chatting with the small crowd of biopharma people we are hosting on October 12 at Silicon Valley Bank’s London headquarters. And there’s a lengthy mixer at the end I’m most looking forward to, with several networking openings between sessions.

Takeda on Tuesday morning made an announcement that almost 3,000 people with the rare disease known as hypoparathyroidism were fearing.

Due to unresolved supply issues and manufacturing woes, Takeda said it will cut its losses and discontinue its hypoparathyroidism drug, known as Natpara (parathyroid hormone), halting all manufacturing of the drug by the end of 2024, but the entire inventory will be available until depleted or expired, a company spokesperson said via email.

When Kaile Zagger took the helm of UC Davis spinout Evolve Biosystems several months ago, the company billed itself as a probiotic maker.

However, she believes the company’s Evivo supplement designed to help infants develop a healthy gut microbiome is “so much more” — and that, she said, calls for a rebrand.

Evolve has, well, evolved into Infinant Health, the company announced on Monday. The new name is a mash-up of the words “infant” and “infinite,” representing the company’s goal of expanding beyond infant care. While its sole product, Evivo, is intended for newborns, Infinant is “quickly developing” an option for kids through the age of two.

After being forced to delay two Phase IIa trials and blaming CMC issues on a Phase Ib miss, Eliem Therapeutics believes it’s now in the clear.

The Seattle and UK-based biotech put out word Wednesday morning about how it conducted new early-stage studies to confirm why low exposure issues arose during the Phase Ib. After researchers compared the results of the studies, Eliem found “no meaningful difference” between them and ruled out CMC as the reason for the foiled Phase Ib study, the company said in a press release.