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Vitae Pharma soars on positive mid-stage trial results for psoriasis drug

pharmafile | March 17, 2016 | News story | Business Services, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing Vitae Pharmaceuticals, drug trial, psoriasis, research 

Shares in Vitae Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: VTAE) nearly doubled in pre-market trading Thursday after the company reported mid-stage trials of its psoriasis drug significantly reduced the skin condition.

The company said, patients taking 350 mg dose of drug candidate VTP-43742, demonstrated a 24% reduction in the psoriasis area severity index than the placebo, while for patients taking the 700 mg dose witnessed a 30% decrease.

Jeff Hatfield, chief executive of Vitae, says: “We believe these data validate RORγt as an exciting and novel therapeutic target for the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders. While the autoimmune market is currently dominated by injectable antibody therapy, we believe VTP-43742 has the potential to expand utilization of oral therapy in a variety of autoimmune disorders, such as psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease with an effective, safe and well tolerated, once-a-day agent.”

Psoriasis, which affects about 7.5 million people in the US, is a chronic autoimmune disorder affecting the skin. It causes cells to rapidly multiply and build up on the skin’s surface, resulting in red scaly patches that are often itchy and painful.

“We plan to advance VTP-43742 into a larger scale 16 week trial in the second half of 2016 to continue to assess the efficacy, safety and tolerability of our first-in-class drug candidate,” says Richard Gregg, chief scientific officer of Vitae.

Shares in the company were up $3.74 at $7.85 in pre-market trading on the Nasdaq.

Anjali Shukla

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