Johnson & Johnson and Genmab both used the festive period to junk therapies that haven’t lived up to their promise in the clinic.
J&J had been evaluating JNJ-95475939, an inhibitor of IL-4 and IL-31, against the IL-4 and IL-13 inhibitor Dupixent in a phase 2b study in patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis. Despite only launching the study in February 2025, according to the federal trials database, the pharma decided it had seen enough.
“The results of a planned interim analysis met prespecified criteria for early termination of the study, as they did not meet the high-bar efficacy we established for advancing our clinical development programs for atopic dermatitis,” J&J explained in a Dec. 26 statement.
The subcutaneously administered therapy was well tolerated in the study, said the company, which stressed that the pharma remains “deeply committed to progressing our rich pipeline of clinical-stage and pre-clinical drug candidates for atopic dermatitis.”
The drug was a relatively new addition to J&J’s pipeline, after the company purchased it from Swiss biotech Numab Therapeutics for $1.25 billion in cash in mid-2024. At the time, Numab investor Novo Holdings pointed to “exciting early data in patients” as being behind J&J’s decision to acquire the drug.
While the end of JNJ-95475939 means that 10-figure price tag now looks like a bad call, J&J still has a number of other inflammation assets in development, including icotrokinra. The pharma is currently awaiting regulatory decisions on the Protagonist Therapeutics-partnered once-daily oral peptide after the drug bested Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu across a pair of phase 3 studies for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.
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Meanwhile, acasunlimab, the PD-L1x4-1BB bispecific antibody Genmab junked over the holidays, is no stranger to rejection. At one point, the Danish biopharma had been collaborating on acasunlimab with BioNTech, evaluating the candidate in three clinical trials, including a phase 2 study as both a monotherapy and in combination with Merck & Co.’s PD-1 inhibitor Keytruda in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.
But, back in August 2024, BioNTech announced that despite acasunilimab’s “encouraging” clinical profile, it had decided not to go any further with the development of the candidate “for reasons relating to portfolio strategy.”
Genmab took acasunilimab into phase 3 trials by itself, but it sounds like the biopharma has now come to a similar conclusion as its former partner. In a Dec. 29 statement, Genmab said it was halting work on the therapy.
“This decision was made as part of Genmab’s strategic focus on the most value‑creating opportunities in its late‑stage portfolio and following a thorough assessment of the evolving competitive landscape,” the company said.
“Although the data have been encouraging, the compelling opportunities we see in our late‑stage pipeline led us to focus our investments where we believe we can deliver the greatest benefit for patients and shareholders,” Genmab CEO Jan van de Winkel, Ph.D., explained in a statement.
The company’s strategy is now to “concentrate resources on programs with the highest potential impact.” They include the AbbVie-partnered blood cancer med Epkinly as well as petosemtamab, a phase 3-stage EGFR×LGR5 bispecific at the center of last year’s $8 billion buyout of Merus. There’s also Rina-S, a potential competitor to AbbVie’s Elahere that arrived from the acquisition of ProfoundBio.
Earlier in 2025, Genmab pruned its pipeline of two antibody-drug conjugates onboarded from the same ProfoundBio buyout.
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William Blair analysts said acasunlimab had “rightfully hit the chopping block,” pointing to updated phase 2 data in November that showed median overall survival across the study was closer to 12.3 months than the 17.5 months suggested by initial results.
“We believe [dropping acasunilimab] is the right decision, given recent deterioration of the overall survival curve from the phase 2 trial with longer follow-up, and it does not detract from what we view as one of the best opportunities in large-cap biotech going into 2026, with key pivotal readouts for Epkinly, Rina-S and petosemtamab,” the analysts wrote in a Dec. 29 note.
