Zevra Therapeutics reported $10.1 million in Miplyffa revenues collected over a 5-week period at the end of 2024.
It’s been just six months since Zevra Therapeutics scored an FDA nod for Miplyffa as the first approved treatment for the rare lysosomal storage disorder Niemann-Pick disease type C (NPC), but the company's rare disease launch is already winning analyst accolades.After a previous rejection in 2021, Miplyffa picked up FDA approval last September to treat neurological manifestations of NPC in combination with Johnson & Johnson’s enzyme inhibitor Zavesca (miglustat).Miplyffa became commercially available in late November and by the year's end, a total of 109 prescription enrollment forms had been submitted, the company reported in its recent fourth-quarter earnings press release. The number includes all 90 patients who were on treatment through an expanded access program by the end of October.In five weeks at the end of the year, the therapy drummed up $10.1 million in net revenue, the company reported. The result blew Cantor Fitzgerald’s sales estimate of $5.2 million out of the water, the analysts wrote in a recent note to clients.The team at Cantor highlighted the “rapid pace” of converting all active patients from the expanded access program to the commercial drug, which could suggest a high compliance rate considering some patients have been on treatment for over five years.“We don't know many rare disease launches that have been launched this fast,” the analysts noted.Next up is a regulatory push in Europe. Zevra aims to file its marketing application with the European Medicines Agency in the second half of this year. Outside of its regulatory goals, the company is stepping up efforts to identify and diagnose more patients with NPC. Considering that more than one-third of the roughly 300 diagnosed patients in the U.S. have already signed up for Miplyffa treatment, this could be especially pertinent to future growth.An estimated 900 people in the U.S. are living with NPC, but only about one-third have been diagnosed, according to Zevra. Although Zevra was first to the NPC arena, IntraBio crossed the FDA finish line with its own NPC drug Aqneursa just one week later. That drug became available immediately upon approval, gaining a bit of a head start on Miplyffa. IntraBio is a privately held company and does not have to report sales figures. Cantor analysts expect Zevra’s drug to pull around $75 million in 2025 sales. Zevra currently has enough cash and expected future sales of Miplyffa and its urea cycle disorder med Olpruva to fund operations through 2029, an extension from its prior projected cash runway of 2027.Elsewhere, Miplyffa’s approval brought another boon for Zevra in the form of a rare pediatric disease priority review voucher (PRV). The company has already locked down an unidentified purchaser that’s set to buy the PRV for $150 million.