Clinical-stage biotech Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR 15.06%) had some encouraging news to report from the lab about one of its investigational medicines on Thursday. As often happens in such circumstances, investors flocked to the stock, and it closed the trading session a bit more than 15% higher. With that rise, it crushed the 0.5% advance of the bellwether S&P 500 index.

Skin in the game

That morning, Nektar published new data from a phase 2b study of rezpegaldesleukin, which targets moderate to severe atopic dermatitis, a skin disorder.

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The healthcare company said that a high dose of the drug achieved statistical significance on its primary endpoint, improvement in the eczema area and severity index versus a placebo over the course of 16 weeks of treatment. It also performed well in key secondary endpoints measuring a reduction of the disorder.

More encouragingly, Nektar found that participants who kept taking the treatment experienced even more profound effects. The biotech added that rezpegaldesleukin was generally well tolerated by the study’s participants.

In addition to atopic dermatitis, the drug is currently being developed by Nektar for the treatment of severe alopecia areata, a disease that can result in hair loss. The next readout from clincal testing for that indication is expected in December by the company.

A new kind of treatment

In its press release on the atopic dermatitis trial’s results, Nektar quoted its chief research and development officer Jonathan Zalevsky as saying that those results “demonstrate the potential of this new biology and the promise of Tregs [regulatory T-cells] as a therapeutic modality to treat inflammatory skin disorders.”