Adi­tum Bio, a biotech in­vest­ment firm that al­so runs clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment for its port­fo­lio com­pa­nies, has done an­oth­er li­cens­ing deal in Chi­na.

The firm, which was found­ed by for­mer No­var­tis CEO Joe Jimenez, cre­at­ed a new com­pa­ny called Kalexo Bio to house the ex­clu­sive glob­al li­cense to a dual-tar­get­ed siR­NA that's be­ing test­ed for lipid man­age­ment in pa­tients with dys­lipi­demia and for pre­ven­tion of high-risk ath­er­o­scle­rot­ic car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, or AS­CVD.

Kalexo will pay $12 mil­lion up­front and up to $1 bil­lion in biobucks to get the rights to the ex­per­i­men­tal drug from Mab­well Bio­science, the com­pa­nies said Wednes­day. Mab­well, based in Shang­hai, is cur­rent­ly run­ning IND-en­abling stud­ies of the can­di­date, co­de­named 2MW7141, Jimenez told End­points News.

John­son & John­son and Pro­tag­o­nist Ther­a­peu­tics are pit­ting their once-dai­ly pso­ri­a­sis pill against drugs like Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s So­tyk­tu in a bid to com­pete in the crowd­ed mar­ket.

The duo re­port­ed Wednes­day that their ex­per­i­men­tal oral IL-23 re­cep­tor block­er beat So­tyk­tu in two Phase 3 stud­ies. The re­sults showed that icotrokin­ra helped a greater pro­por­tion of pso­ri­a­sis pa­tients achieve clear or al­most clear skin at 16 and 24 weeks — and with few­er side ef­fects.

The de­tailed da­ta are set to be shared on Thurs­day at the Eu­ro­pean Acad­e­my of Der­ma­tol­ogy and Venere­ol­o­gy's an­nu­al meet­ing in Paris, and they build on pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed topline re­sults. While the re­sults com­pare two pills, J&J and Pro­tag­o­nist are al­so start­ing an­oth­er Phase 3 tri­al pit­ting icotrokin­ra against J&J's Ste­lara, an in­jectable med­ica­tion. The com­pa­nies, which plan to study icotrokin­ra in oth­er im­mune dis­eases, be­lieve it can be­come a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar prod­uct.

Eli Lil­ly said Wednes­day that or­for­glipron beat No­vo Nordisk’s oral drug Ry­bel­sus in a head-to-head tri­al in di­a­betes pa­tients, the lat­est twist in the In­di­anapo­lis drug­mak­er's ef­forts to get its obe­si­ty pill to mar­ket.

And Lil­ly is look­ing in­to us­ing a new fast-track re­view path­way at the FDA when it sub­mits its ap­proval ap­pli­ca­tion for or­for­glipron, Lil­ly’s car­diometa­bol­ic health chief Ken­neth Custer told End­points News. The com­pa­ny ex­pects to file or­for­glipron as a di­a­betes treat­ment in 2026, where­as a fil­ing in obe­si­ty — a much big­ger com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ty — is planned for this year.

Wednes­day's da­ta are note­wor­thy in light of or­for­glipron’s dis­ap­point­ing per­for­mance when com­pared across tri­als with oral We­govy in obe­si­ty. We­govy and Ry­bel­sus share the same ac­tive mol­e­cule as a GLP-1 ag­o­nist.

Sky­hawk Ther­a­peu­tics re­leased its first tri­al da­ta in Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease pa­tients on Wednes­day, demon­strat­ing ear­ly and com­pet­i­tive lev­els of ef­fi­ca­cy in an area that's seen a long list of fail­ures by oth­er drug de­vel­op­ers.