Sur­pris­ing Wall Street, Rea­ta un­veils pos­i­tive piv­otal da­ta on Friedre­ich’s atax­ia drug

Days af­ter Rea­ta Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals un­teth­ered it­self from its part­ner­ship with Ab­b­Vie, the Texas-based drug de­vel­op­er is off to the reg­u­la­tors with pos­i­tive piv­otal da­ta on omavelox­olone, an ex­per­i­men­tal drug an­a­lysts were not par­tic­u­lar­ly bank­ing on.

Omavelox­olone, like Rea­ta’s oth­er lead drug — bar­dox­olone — is a small mol­e­cule en­gi­neered to bind to a gene called Keap1 to en­hance the ac­tiv­i­ty of the pro­tein Nrf2 in or­der to defuse in­flam­ma­tion. The drug was be­ing test­ed in a two-part mid-stage tri­al in pa­tients with Friedre­ich’s atax­ia (FA), an in­her­it­ed de­gen­er­a­tive neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­or­der for which there are no ap­proved ther­a­pies.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER