Eczema drug Kymera succeeds in first trial, could rival Dupixent

Kymera Therapeutics announced Monday that, for the second time this year, it had successfully completed an early trial of a closely watched drug intended to rival Sanofi and Regeneron’s blockbuster treatment Dupixent.

The phase 1 BroADen study enrolled 22 patients with moderate to severe eczema (atopic dermatitis), all of whom took Kymera’s investigational pill, KT-621. After four weeks of treatment and two weeks of follow-up, their overall disease severity dropped by 63% on average, according to the commonly used Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) score. This was a slightly better improvement than Wall Street had hoped for, according to a note announcing the results from Leerink Partners.

Watertown, Mass.-based Kymera, which has a market value of about $4.8 billion, is seeking to compete with Dupixent, a treatment developed by Sanofi and Regeneron that generated more than $14 billion in revenue last year and has been approved for the treatment of eczema, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, among other conditions. The blockbuster drug is an antibody that blocks IL-4 and IL-13, immune signals called cytokines that can cause inflammation.