Incyte Update: New Drugs, Cancer Cures, Downtown Office Plans

Incyte CEO Hervé Hoppenot talkes about plans to turn the company’s Augustine Cut-off offices into an R&D center while remodeling old MBNA buildings for everyone else.

Some of Incyte’s biopharmaceutical drugs can help skin problems and one seems to be a cure for vitiligo, CEO Hervé Hoppenot said in an update Thursday.

He also said the company plans to renovate the two downtown MBNA buildings in a way that will make them unrecognizable to the people familiar with how they look now.

And he predicted that cures for cancer will be coming soon, and the country where those cures are discovered will reap the economic benefit.

Hoppenot spoke during a breakfast sponsored by the Delaware BioScience Association. The breakfasts, held six times a year, are networking affairs, but also give new member companies a chance to introduce themselves and tell people what they do.

Incyte recently was named the 2024 winner of the Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation’s 2024 Freedom Award.

Named for the former Delaware governor, a champion of business and development, the award is given annually to an individual or organization whose successful idea has led to economic growth and brought innovation to the private sector.

Incyte, which creates drugs focused on activating the body’s own immune system, was founded in Wilmington in 2002. It now has more than 2,500 employees, over 1,000 research and clinical development employees, eight approved products and ongoing clinical trials in dozens of disease areas.

DelawareBio CEO Michael Fleming joked that the du Pont family and Hoppenot have a natural connection: Both are French.

Incyte news

Hoppenot joked that although Incyte had only been in existence about 20 years, it sometimes seemed like it had been 600 years.

Much of the work it’s doing, as well as what’s happening in China, may change the world, he said.

“Our industry has a profound geopolitical impact,” he said. “But truth is that these cures for cancers are coming in the next few years. If it’s discovered in the U.S., it will have a gigantic economic impact as a country. If they are discovered somewhere else, that impact will be somewhere else in the world. It’s really important.”

Among other things, he told the crowd that the company is finding new uses for some of its drugs.

The CEO joked that he was not always sure why a cancer drug would work on another issue, and he was glad they did.

The company also has focused on vitiligo a disease that involves a slow loss of skin pigment, leaving white patches. It occurs in several ethnic groups.

He pointed to the use of Opzelura, a cream, that can help people dealing with vitiligo whose disease hasn’t progressed far. That disease involves a slow loss of skin color, leaving white patches. He showed photos of it dramatically helping a man of color regain a lot of his skin tone.

Povorcitinib, available in infusion and pill form, even more dramatically helped patients who had progressed further down the disease path but who used it for 52 weeks. In photos documenting what happened to one woman, her skin seems to have reverted completely to her natural tone.

Even more exciting, he said, is Anti-CD122, an injectable antibody. He showed scans that showed skin completely restored after just eight weeks.

“We are basically in the business of curing the disease now,” he said.