Abbott drug maintains psoriasis relief in trial

By Ransdell Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A high percentage of patients taking Abbott Laboratories Inc's experimental psoriasis drug, ABT-874, maintained an impressive improvement in symptoms 12 weeks after discontinuing the treatment, the drugmaker said on Monday.

The company presented initial data earlier this year from the Phase II study, in which patients with moderate to severe cases of the inflammatory skin disease were treated with the injectable antibody for 12 weeks.

At least 90 percent of patients achieved 75 percent improvement in psoriasis symptoms at the end of the 12-week treatment period, the data showed, except for one group that received the smallest dose of the drug. That compared with such improvement in only 3 percent of those receiving placebos.

More than half of patients achieved 90 percent improvement, in the same four groups receiving highest doses of the medicine, compared with none of those receiving placebos, the company reported at an earlier medical meeting.

The patients were then monitored for another 12 weeks to assess the durability of their relief from symptoms, which include red scaly patches of skin.

At 24 weeks, or 12 weeks after treatment concluded, more than two-thirds of patients who initially had a 75 percent improvement in symptoms maintained at least a 50 percent improvement, the company said in Buenos Aires at a meeting of the World Congress of Dermatology.

ABT-874 works through a different mechanism than currently approved medicines. It is designed to block interleukin-12 and interleukin 23, two proteins linked to inflammation in psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders.

Two leading approved psoriasis drugs, Amgen Inc's Enbrel and Johnson & Johnson's Remicade, work instead by blocking another inflammation-causing protein called tumor necrosis factor (TNF).

Abbott's own Humira, a blockbuster treatment for rheumatoid arthritis that is awaiting U.S. approval for psoriasis, also blocks TNF.