Vera Therapeutics (VERA) is a biotech company that has three drugs in its research pipeline:
Drug Pipeline
Atacicept - This is the more mature of the drugs that Vera is exploring and they are specifically focusing on IgAN aka Berger’s disease. 50% of IgAN patients require dialysis or a kidney transplant within 20 years. The average age of a Bergers diagnosis is ~35 years old. Atacicept tries to fix the issue by attaching to the BAFF and APRIL cells so they aren’t able to bind to the B-cell and create the autoantigen and autoantibodies that cause the kidney damage.
Phase 3 Notes
- In April 2025, we completed full enrollment of ORIGIN 3
- The primary efficacy endpoint evaluated 36-week urine protein creatinine ratio (UPCR) in the initial cohort of 200 participants.
- We have also committed to providing long-term access to atacicept for all ORIGIN participants by initiating ORIGIN EXTEND, a long-term Phase 2 extension study that offers open-label atacicept to participants who completed ORIGIN Phase 2b or 3 until commercial availability in their country or region.
- Other diseases this may help with:
- primary membranous nephropathy (pMN)
- focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS)
- minimal change disease (MCD)
- systemic lupus erythematosus
- Sjogren’s disease
- idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura
- autoimmune hemolytic anemia
- primary membranous nephropathy (pMN)
MAU868 - A neutralizing antibody targeting the BK Virus which can be reactivated during transplant procedures. Vera has an exclusive license from Pfizer to develop and commercialize MAU868. They completed a phase 2 trial in 2022. As far as I could tell, there isn’t much interest in continuing this research path. It also seems telling that they purchased VT-109 rights. Maybe they will eventually either sell this or pick it back up but I actually like that they aren’t trying to get too many things going at the same time.
VT-109 - A dual BAFF/APRIL inhibitor that is in preclinical development. Vera entered into a license agreement with Standford University that gives Vera a worldwide development and comercial rights to VT-109. They paid $800k up front and may need to pay milestone payments in the future.
Financial notes
Debt repayment not required until 2029
Kevin Notes
It seems like Atacicept is currently in the FDAs court.
IgAN affects ~130k people in the US
Timeline
Bilogics License Application - Q4 2025
FDA Decision - Q3 2026
Commercial launch - 2026 sometime