Kyowa Kirin’s San Diego lab just helped the pharma company make $400M on a deal for an eczema drug with Amgen – The San Diego Union-Tribune

Japanese pharma giant Kyowa Kirin is set to receive $400 million in a deal that wouldnt have happened without the companys San Diego lab.

The company recently announced a partnership with Amgen to develop a drug against eczema, a skin condition that can leave painful and itchy rashes across your hands, feet and behind your knees, among other places. Those rashes break out when irritants and allergens pass through the outermost layer of skin, triggering inflammation.

Kyowa Kirins experimental treatment, developed by scientists at its La Jolla lab, targets immune cells responsible for these inflammatory signals. The drug uses an antibody, a Y-shaped protein, to target T cells, immune cells that normally play a key role in fighting off microbes but can also trigger friendly fire against the bodys own tissues. The small arms of that Y latch onto the surface of activated T cells, while scientists modified the other end to efficiently trigger other immune cells to kill T cells coated in the antibody.

In February, Kyowa Kirin reported that the drug, KHK4083, significantly reduced the size and severity of eczema rashes without causing serious side effects in a 274-person study.

If those results hold up in larger follow-up studies, Kyowa Kirin could pull in another $850 million from Amgen, plus future royalties on sales. More importantly, says Andrew McKnight, director of the companys La Jolla site, the drug could benefit up to 25 to 30 million patients across the U.S., Japan and Europe, regions where Kyowa Kirin and Amgen see the greatest market potential.

This opens up a new paradigm, a new therapy for those patients, he said.

Its just the latest example of the work done by his team of 42 scientists. The local lab is the only research facility Kyowa Kirin has outside of Japan, and its roots in San Diego site date to 1988 back when it was called Gemini Science.

During that time, the lab has worked closely with the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, founded around the same time. Kyowa Kirin helps fund the nonprofit research organizations annual budget, according to McKnight, and the company often follows up on promising initial findings from the institutes scientists. Its a long-running partnership that has led to an antibody treatment being developed against Crohns disease and now against COVID-19, too.

The local research lab has also developed its own drugs internally, including Crysvita, an antibody that helps treat patients with a genetic condition that leads to low phosphate levels in their blood, which can result in weak, soft bones.

The FDA approved Crysvita in 2018, and the drug was approved in Japan in 2019. During the first three months of 2021, Kyowa Kirin earned $162 million in sales from Crysvita, easily exceeding revenue from any of its other products, according to the companys financial reports.

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Kyowa Kirin's San Diego lab just helped the pharma company make $400M on a deal for an eczema drug with Amgen - The San Diego Union-Tribune