John­son & John­son and Pro­tag­o­nist Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced two Phase 3 suc­cess­es for their oral IL-23 drug, show­cas­ing the first re­sults out of an ex­pan­sive piv­otal tri­al pro­gram in plaque pso­ri­a­sis.

J&J said Mon­day af­ter­noon that the drug, known as icotrokin­ra and pre­vi­ous­ly called JNJ-2113, met both co-pri­ma­ry end­points in a 600-pa­tient study in plaque pso­ri­a­sis. It al­so hit the pri­ma­ry end­point in a small­er study of 300 pa­tients with plaque pso­ri­a­sis. Both tri­als com­pared icotrokin­ra to place­bo.

In the larg­er study, 64.7% of pa­tients on 200 mg of icotrokin­ra once dai­ly saw their skin clear up en­tire­ly or al­most en­tire­ly, us­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tor as­sess­ments of IGA scores af­ter 16 weeks, com­pared to 8.3% on place­bo. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 49.6% achieved at least 90% skin clear­ance based on a PASI score at 16 weeks, com­pared to 4.4% in the place­bo group.

They've got $70 mil­lion, two guys named Ned, and plans to go af­ter ear­ly-stage sci­ence where oth­er ven­ture cap­i­tal firms "would fear to tread."

On Tues­day, Jupiter Bioven­tures re­vealed it­self as a new VC firm. Led by for­mer NCI Di­rec­tor Nor­man Sharp­less and re­peat biotech en­tre­pre­neur Nathaniel David — both of whom go by Ned — they plan to fund about 10 ideas and turn them in­to three suc­cess­ful biotech com­pa­nies.

The fund al­ready has about five so-called "moons," or biotech star­tups, in de­vel­op­ment. It's al­ready "de-or­bit­ed," or killed off, three off­shoots, David said in an in­ter­view. He's pre­vi­ous­ly co-found­ed Syrrx, Achao­gen, Kythera Bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and Uni­ty Biotech­nol­o­gy.

Eli Lil­ly re­port­ed pos­i­tive da­ta for its drug can­di­date for el­e­vat­ed lipids, mark­ing a key mile­stone for a po­ten­tial oral op­tion in a space dom­i­nat­ed by in­jectable can­di­dates.

Lil­ly’s mu­valaplin met the pri­ma­ry end­point of change in lipopro­tein(a) ver­sus place­bo at 12 weeks in a Phase 2 tri­al of 233 adults with el­e­vat­ed Lp(a) lev­els and high car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk, ac­cord­ing to da­ta pre­sent­ed Mon­day at the Amer­i­can Heart As­so­ci­a­tion sci­en­tif­ic ses­sions in Chica­go.

In par­tic­u­lar, the 240 mg dose led to an 85.8% place­bo-ad­just­ed re­duc­tion in Lp(a) mea­sured us­ing an in­tact Lp(a) as­say, while the 60 mg dose de­liv­ered an 81.7% re­duc­tion. All three dos­es, in­clud­ing the low­est 10 mg dose, al­so met the tri­al’s sec­ondary end­points, in­clud­ing change from base­line in per­cent­age change in apolipopro­tein B and high-sen­si­tiv­i­ty C-re­ac­tive pro­tein.

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed for the first time da­ta from its clin­i­cal tri­al of a cell ther­a­py for au­toim­mune dis­eases, which has quick­l