The race to best treat a dis­ease long con­fused with MS heats up with Roche's PhI­II re­sults

With in­flamed myelin and fre­quent op­tic neu­ri­tis episodes, NMOSD pa­tients were for years con­fused with MS pa­tients. Now mul­ti­ple treat­ments for the rare au­toim­mune dis­ease, of­fi­cial­ly called neu­romyelitis op­ti­ca spec­trum dis­or­der, are out or near­ing ap­proval.

Roche just pub­lished Phase III da­ta on its NMOSD drug satral­izum­ab in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine, the sec­ond pos­i­tive round of re­sults. Of the 41 NMOSD pa­tients who re­ceived the IL-6 an­ti­body, 89% didn’t ex­pe­ri­ence a re­lapse af­ter 48 weeks. Mean­while, 66% of the 42 pa­tients in the place­bo were re­lapse-free at that point.

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