Af­ter a check­ered mid-stage pro­gram marred by pa­tient deaths, Au­rinia emerged vic­to­ri­ous on Wednes­day with Phase III lu­pus nephri­tis da­ta that demon­strat­ed its lead drug is safe and ef­fec­tive for a pa­tient pop­u­la­tion that has few op­tions.

Pe­ter Green­leaf CEO, Au­rinia

Au­rinia’s shares sky­rock­et­ed in Thurs­day morn­ing pre­mar­ket trad­ing, as the Cana­di­an biotech un­veiled plans to sub­mit a mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion next year.

The 357-pa­tient place­bo-con­trolled AU­RO­RA tri­al test­ed the com­pa­ny’s drug, vo­closporin, in com­bi­na­tion with my­cophe­no­late and low-dose cor­ti­cos­teroids to eval­u­ate whether the ther­a­py could im­prove the speed of and over­all re­nal re­sponse rates in pa­tients with lu­pus nephri­tis, where the au­toim­mune dis­ease rav­ages the kid­neys, trig­ger­ing in­flam­ma­tion that could lead to blood and/or pro­tein in the urine, high blood pres­sure, poor kid­ney func­tion, or kid­ney fail­ure.

Pa­tients giv­en vo­closporin record­ed re­nal re­sponse of 40.8%, while those on the con­trol arm ex­pe­ri­enced a rate of 22.5% — meet­ing the main goal of the study (p < 0.001) at 52 weeks. The Au­rinia ther­a­py al­so in­duced sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments across all pre­spec­i­fied sec­ondary end­points in­clud­ing re­nal re­sponse at 24 weeks, par­tial re­nal re­sponse at dif­fer­ent time points and time to achieve uri­nary pro­tein-to-cre­a­ti­nine ra­tio.

On the safe­ty side, vo­closporin da­ta was al­so de­ci­sive.

Six deaths oc­curred in the study, one in the vo­closporin arm and five in the con­trol group. Se­ri­ous ad­verse events were re­port­ed in 20.8% of vo­closporin pa­tients, ver­sus 21.3% in the con­trol arm.

In 2016, Au­rinia hit a ma­jor road­block with its vo­closporin pro­gram af­ter 13 deaths were record­ed in its phase IIb study – 10 in the low-dose arm, 2 in the high-dose arm and on­ly one in the con­trol group. How­ev­er, 40% of the 265 pa­tients in the study were en­rolled in sites in Asia, where treat­ment stan­dards are dif­fer­ent, Au­rinia had sug­gest­ed at the time.

On Wednes­day, SVB Leerink’s Joseph Schwartz sug­gest­ed Au­rinia’s lat­est da­ta was in-line with his “op­ti­mistic ex­pec­ta­tions.”

“AUPH has ac­cord­ing­ly avoid­ed prob­lem­at­ic sites in Ph.3 AU­RO­RA and to­day’s re­sult shows the fruits of that ef­fort,” he said. “With a clear mor­tal­i­ty ad­van­tage in fa­vor of vo­closporin treat­ment, we think the safe­ty con­tro­ver­sy will take a per­ma­nent back­seat for vo­closporin in lu­pus nephri­tis (LN).”

Au­rinia’s shares flew up 137% to $19.89 in pre­mar­ket trad­ing.

The sys­temic au­toim­mune dis­ease, in which the body’s im­mune sys­tem launch­es an at­tack on its own tis­sues and or­gans, af­fects about 1.5 mil­lion Amer­i­cans, ac­cord­ing to The Lu­pus Foun­da­tion of Amer­i­ca. Rough­ly 60% of lu­pus pa­tients de­vel­op lu­pus nephri­tis and 1 in 4 progress to end-stage re­nal dis­ease.

Lu­pus is a drug de­vel­op­er’s night­mare. In the last six decades, there has been just one FDA ap­proval, with the field re­sem­bling a grave­yard in re­cent years.  Last Oc­to­ber, UCB and Bio­gen’s an­ti-CD40L drug failed in a late-stage study, months af­ter Xen­cor and Sanofi’s Abl­ynx al­so con­ced­ed de­feat in their pro­grams. In Au­gust, how­ev­er, As­traZeneca of­fered a glim­mer of hope af­ter its drug, an­i­frol­um­ab, cleared a Phase III study.

The on­ly bi­o­log­ic so far to win ap­proval for lu­pus is GSK’s Benlysta — which was cleared for adult use in 2011 and for rare cas­es of child­hood lu­pus this year. GSK is in the midst of test­ing Benlysta in com­bi­na­tion with Roche’s rit­ux­imab in the hope the com­bi­na­tion will have a more po­tent ef­fect on the dis­ease ver­sus Benlysta monother­a­py. And last month, Roche said it was work­ing on putting to­geth­er a late-stage study for its mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body Gazy­va in pa­tients with lu­pus nephri­tis.

The co-owner of a Florida-based clinical research site pleaded guilty to lying to an FDA investigator during a 2017 inspection, revealing that she falsely portrayed part of a GlaxoSmithKline pediatric asthma study as legitimate, when in fact she knew that certain data had been falsified, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Three other employees — Yvelice Villaman Bencosme, Lisett Raventos and Maytee Lledo — previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced in connection with falsifying data associated with the trial at the CRO Unlimited Medical Research.

New research shows how generic drug companies can successfully market a limited number of approved indications for a brand name drug, prior to coming to market for all of the indications. But several recent court decisions have created a layer of uncertainty around these so-called “skinny” labels.

While courts have generally allowed generic manufacturers to use their statutorily permitted skinny-label approvals, last summer, a federal circuit court found that Teva Pharmaceuticals was liable for inducing prescribers and patients to infringe GlaxoSmithKline’s patents through advertising and marketing practices that suggested Teva’s generic, with its skinny label, could be employed for the patented uses.