Trail­ing As­traZeneca in lu­pus, Bris­tol My­ers looks to push TYK2 drug in­to PhI­II tri­als

In the past year, As­traZeneca has won US and EU ap­provals for its lu­pus an­ti­body Saph­ne­lo, which be­came the first new lu­pus drug to get ap­proved since GSK’s Benlysta in 2011.

Lag­ging be­hind, Bris­tol My­ers Squibb has al­so been chas­ing the lu­pus in­di­ca­tion with its po­ten­tial block­buster drug deu­cravac­i­tinib, which, un­like Saph­ne­lo, is an oral drug. To­day, the phar­ma an­nounced that its Phase II study reached its pri­ma­ry end­point and that it will be mov­ing in­to Phase III stud­ies for sys­temic lu­pus ery­the­mato­sus — the most com­mon form of lu­pus where the im­mune sys­tem at­tacks the body and caus­es wide­spread in­flam­ma­tion.

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