Roche has waved goodbye to an inflammation drug from Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals—as well as the $100 million that the pharma paid for the therapy—as part of a quarterly pipeline cleanout of underperforming assets.
The Swiss pharma’s Genentech unit paid $80 million upfront for vixarelimab, an antibody that targets oncostatin M receptor beta, back in 2022. That deal also involved handing over another $20 million once Roche received certain drug supplies from Kiniksa.
Vixarelimab’s history stretches even further back, with Kiniksa having itself bought the drug from Biogen for $11.5 million in 2016.
Under the 2022 deal with Roche, Kiniksa continued to finalize a phase 2b trial of vixarelimab in the reduction of itching in patients with the inflammatory skin disease prurigo nodularis. Genentech then took the drug into a phase 2 study in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease.
However, Roche has now decided to abandon this program, explaining to Fierce Biotech this morning that a futility analysis had “determined that the study was unlikely to achieve its efficacy objectives.”
“There were no new safety signals identified in this study,” according to a Roche spokesperson, who added that the company was “disappointed” by the futility analysis.
Roche also disclosed this morning that it had dropped a trio of candidates from its phase 1 pipeline, including an in-house antibody against VEGF and angiopoietin 2 called zifibancimig. The pharma had been evaluating the antibody in a phase 1/2 study of patients with an eye disease called neovascular age-related macular degeneration. The drug was administered with Roche’s Port Delivery system, an FDA-approved, surgically inserted ocular implant.
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The company explained to Fierce that it had “decided to phase out” the zifibancimig program after an interim data review showed it had a “very low probability of meeting the high bar for safety, durability, and efficacy required for a therapy that would ensure a strong enough benefit for patients in need.”
“While we are disappointed with the results, Roche remains fully committed to developing the Port Delivery Platform, starting with Susvimo now and expanding it to become a platform for multiple chronic retinal diseases, offering choice to patients to maximize their vision outcomes,” it added.
Another phase 1 drug sunk by early data is FAP-LTBR, also known as RG6221, a LTBR agonist in development for solid tumors.
“The current dataset from the phase 1 trial suggests that continued enrollment is highly unlikely to generate results that justify further clinical development of the molecule,” the pharma told Fierce.
The final asset to be dumped today was another solid tumor drug called RG6561.