UCB de­tails pos­i­tive piv­otal da­ta for myas­the­nia gravis, days af­ter As­traZeneca scores OK for Soliris suc­ces­sor

UCB is tee­ing up a slate of new reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ings af­ter spelling out Phase III suc­cess­es for a pair of ex­per­i­men­tal drugs be­ing test­ed for myas­the­nia gravis, in­clud­ing one that it paid more than $2 bil­lion to get ahold of. But their cut of the piv­otal da­ta rais­es some big red flags for how they might con­tend with the lead­ers in the field at As­traZeneca’s Alex­ion sub­sidiary.

The two drugs are the FcRn an­ti­body rozano­lix­izum­ab and zilu­coplan, a C5 in­hibitor gained in the $2.1 bil­lion buy­out of Ra Phar­ma in 2019. At the time, UCB was tilt­ing its lance against Soliris, the cash cow at Alex­ion that had been ap­proved in myas­the­nia gravis in 2017. But now Soliris is be­ing joined by Alex­ion’s fol­low-up C5 Ul­tomiris, which gained ap­proval for this life-threat­en­ing neu­ro­mus­cu­lar con­di­tion just days ago.

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