Voyager Therapeutics Inc.’s recent selection of a lead development candidate, VY-1706, for its tau silencing gene therapy program in Alzheimer’s disease brought renewed attention to the target, which continues to intrigue a substantial lineup of developers. Bellwether data rolled out this fall from UCB SA and Roche AG at the Clinical Trials in Alzheimer’s Disease meeting in Madrid.
The U.S. FDA added hidradenitis suppurativa to the label for UCB SA’s Bimzelx (bimekizumab-bkzx), throwing renewed light on the indication, a chronic disease that causes painful, boil-like lumps that appear under the skin. Regulators cleared the humanized IL-17A and IL-17F antagonist for adults with moderate to severe HS, marking the drug’s fifth approval.
UCB SA is divesting its mature neurology and allergy business in China, selling those products to CBC Group and Mubadala Investment Co. for $680 million so it can refocus on innovation and partnerships in China. The deal includes UCB’s manufacturing site in Zhuhai in Guangdong province.
UCB SA has identified imidazotriazine derivatives acting as interleukin-17 (IL-17) modulators reported to be useful for the treatment of inflammation and autoimmune diseases.
Three people have agreed to pay more than $170,000 to settle U.S. SEC insider trading charges related to UCB SA’s $1.9 billion acquisition of Zogenix Inc.
In August 2020, Johnson & Johnson paid $6.5 billion cash to acquire Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc. That strengthened J&J’s immune-mediated disease portfolio and grew its interest in autoantibody-driven disease therapies by bringing nipocalimab into the fold. Now the investment is paying off with top-line results of phase II and III studies that hit their primary endpoints using the fully human glycosylated monoclonal antibody targeting the human neonatal Fc receptor. The studies were in treating generalized myasthenia gravis and in Sjögren’s disease.
After flying high in 2022, digital therapeutics (DTx) companies crashed to Earth in 2023 and scrambled to identify a path to profitability, or at least continued viability.
Interleukin-17A (IL-17A) is a pro-inflammatory cytokine involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory, immune-mediated diseases such as psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and others.
