By Padmanabhan Ananthan Dec 18 (Reuters) – Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical said on Thursday its experimental pill for a type of skin disease, developed using artificial intelligence, succeeded in two late-stage studies. More than half of the plaque psoriasis patients across the studies showed clear or almost clear skin after 16 weeks of treatment with the […]
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Takeda’s AI-crafted psoriasis pill succeeds in late-stage studies
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By Padmanabhan Ananthan
Dec 18 (Reuters) – Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical said on Thursday its experimental pill for a type of skin disease, developed using artificial intelligence, succeeded in two late-stage studies.
More than half of the plaque psoriasis patients across the studies showed clear or almost clear skin after 16 weeks of treatment with the once-daily drug, zasocitinib, the company said.
Takeda plans to file marketing applications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory authorities in 2026.
If approved, zasocitinib would join a crowded plaque psoriasis market featuring well-established oral rivals like Bristol Myers’ Sotyktu and Amgen’s Otezla, plus injectables including Johnson & Johnson’s Tremfya, AbbVie’s Skyrizi, and Novartis’ Cosentyx.
“These (zasocitinib) data outstrip Sotyktu and look as good or better than oral IL‑23s like icotrokinra — this is close to a best‑case scenario,” TD Cowen analyst Michael Nedelcovych said.
He added that he remains cautious on the overall oral psoriasis opportunity, but is receptive to Takeda’s $3 billion to $6 billion peak sales target.
Takeda’s pill offers a convenient daily alternative alongside Sotyktu and Otezla in a market dominated by injectable drugs for treating plaque psoriasis, in which red, scaly patches occur on the skin due to an overactive immune system.
“The level of efficacy that we’re seeing, combined with the safety profile (and) with the convenience of administration, is quite unique in this landscape,” Andy Plump, president of R&D at Takeda, told Reuters in an interview.
The drugmaker acquired zasocitinib from Nimbus Therapeutics in 2022 in a deal worth up to $6 billion. Nimbus had identified the compound with the help of AI, a trend picking up pace in the pharmaceutical industry as companies seek to accelerate development of medicines.
Plump said Takeda plans to make AI a core part of how it discovers new medicines and added that the company “has aspirations to enable all drug discovery and drug development with AI”.
(Reporting by Padmanabhan Ananthan in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo and Shailesh Kuber)