Voclosporin

Voclosporin, sold under the brand name Lupkynis, is a calcineurin inhibitor used as an immunosuppressant medication. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of lupus nephritis (LN) on January 22, 2021.
It is an analog of ciclosporin that has enhanced action against calcineurin and greater metabolic stability. Voclosporin was discovered by Robert T. Foster and his team at Isotechnika in the mid 1990s. Isotechnika was founded in 1993 and merged with Aurinia Pharmaceuticals in 2013. In Jan. 2021, Aurinia Pharmaceuticals received approval from the Food & Drug Administration to sell the drug Lupkynis.
Initially, voclosporin was a mixture of equal proporations of "cis" and "trans" geometric isomers of amino acid-1 modified cyclosporin. Later, in collaboration with Roche in Basel, Switzerland, voclosporin's manufacturing was changed to yield the predominantly "trans" isomer which possesses most of the beneficial effect of the drug (immunosuppression) in the treatment of organ transplantation and autoimmune diseases.