MoonLake touts promise of Nanobody sonelokimab

Shares of Switzerland-based MoonLake Immunotherapeutics (Nasdaq: MLTX) were up 10.5% at $50.38 in pre-market activity today, after its Sunday R&D update on its Nanobody sonelokimab, which it said led to significant improvements across all key outcomes at 24-week data from the ARGO trial in psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and other important R&D updates.

The clinical-stage biotech noted that treatment with sonelokimab resulted in unprecedented improvements in composite scores that reflect responses in different domains simultaneously. ACR50+PASI90 up to 59%, ACR 50+PASI 100 up to 52%, ACR 70+PASI 100 up to 48% and MDA up to 61% response. In all composite scores, sonelokimab showed 16-29 percentage point differences to the reference adalimumab arm, comparatively higher to competitors using the same reference arm.

While the 60mg dose was found to be sufficient to reach high levels of response in the general trial population, the 120mg dose was found to improve responses further in specific patient sub-groups, which suggests two doses being carried over to Phase III.