Advancement made in experimental lupus treatment

Rockville-based Human Genome Sciences, a listed biotechnology company in U.S., announced Monday that its experimental lupus treatment passed another key goal on its path to potentially becoming the first new drug for the disease in decades.

Lupus, a kind of debilitating disease, has been a graveyard for pharmaceutical companies in recent years. One drug after another has had setbacks or outright failures in clinical trials.

The latest round of studies on the experimental drug Benlysta showed that a sufficient number of lupus patients given a higher dosage of the drug showed improvement after a year, which enabled the drug to meet its target. A lower dosage of the drug did not meet that target.

"The results of the new trial were not as pretty as the first one, but it is good enough,” Avik Roy, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt, said in a note to clients.

The next step is to submit the drug to the FDA. If approved, Benlysta could be on the market in late 2010, the company said.

"We believe that likelihood of approval is high and that commercial potential is substantial," Barclays Capital analyst Jim Birchenough wrote in a note to investors.

Many industry analysts and lupus experts have questioned whether a new medication for treating the disease would ever come; it has been more than 50 years since a lupus drug has been approved.

Shares of Human Genome Sciences rose 6.59 dollars, or 35.3 percent, to 25.28 dollars in Monday trading. Earlier the stock traded at 26.21 dollars, its highest level since February 2002.

Source: Xinhuanet/Agencies