Signs outside the Johnson & Johnson offices in Irvine, California, U.S., on Friday, October 10, 2025.
Kyle Grillot Bloomberg | fake images
Johnson & Johnson On Wednesday it said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved its once-daily psoriasis pill, the first oral option to rival best-selling injections.
The FDA approved the pill Icotyde to treat moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, an autoimmune condition that causes rough patches on the skin. Patients usually begin treatment with topical medications.
If they don't work, you switch to pills or injections. J&J believes Icotyde will become the first-line routine treatment for psoriasis, between topicals and injections.
Drug manufacturers have been developing medications more advanced than standard topicals, making psoriasis a highly competitive space. Icotyde targets the same IL-23 receptor as top-selling shots like Tremfya and J&J. Abvie's Skyrizi, which offers patients an oral alternative to some of the most advanced (and most expensive) medications on the market.
“We think it's going to be revolutionary to be able to have something that's relatively simple, that offers that level of clearance, a reliable safety profile, and in a simple pill,” said Jennifer Taubert, president of J&J Innovative Medicine.
J&J estimates that about 8 million people in the U.S. have plaque psoriasis and that 75% of people don't switch from topicals to injections for reasons such as fear of needles. Taubert sees Icotyde as attractive to those patients.
“We think having the kind of profile that Icotyde has in a simple oral pill that you take once a day, we think it's going to be an absolute game-changer for patients,” Taubert said.
J&J has not announced how much Icotyde will cost, other than to say the company will help people pay for the drug. Rival vaccines Tremfya and Skyrizi cost about $100,000 a year.
J&J projects peak annual sales of Icotyde will exceed $5 billion once it is approved for other autoimmune conditions. It is testing the drug for psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.
Shares of J&J fell a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, while shares of AbbVie, maker of Skyrizi, fell more than 4%. Therapeutic Protagonista biotech company that developed Icotyde with J&J, was trading virtually flat.
