Abbvie’s ROR ends with a whimper

Only a week after Immunic disappointed with its RORγ inverse agonist IMU-935, Abbvie has thrown in the towel on its similarly acting contender, ABBV-157. On Friday’s earnings call the big pharma slipped out the news of the discontinuation, citing new findings in a preclinical toxicology study of the project, which had been in phase 2 for psoriasis. This is another nail in the coffin for this class, which has seen the termination of various projects – often on toxicity concerns – including a previous effort from Abbvie and its partner Inventiva. Hitting RORγ has been pursued because of its ability to lower levels of IL-17, a cytokine implicated in autoimmune diseases and currently targeted by antibodies like Novartis’s Cosentyx. However, systemic RORγ inhibition can potentially cause progressive thymic dysregulation leading to thymic lymphoma, SVB analysts noted. There are not many other RORγ assets still in play, a look at the pipeline shows – although Immunic hopes to continue development of IMU-935 in psoriasis. Abbvie’s setback could be good news for the likes of Dice, which reported promising early data recently with its oral IL-17 inhibitor DC-806, and for others developing differently acting oral autoimmune therapies, such the Tyk2 inhibitors.