Less than a month af­ter Prax­is Pre­ci­sion Med­i­cines hit Wall Street with an up­sized IPO, the FDA has slapped a clin­i­cal hold on its lead can­di­date for ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der (MDD), send­ing shares spi­ral­ing.

With­out pro­vid­ing much in­for­ma­tion, the FDA said in an email that it re­viewed Prax­is’ IND for its Phase II/III tri­al, and is plac­ing a full clin­i­cal hold on the study. More de­tails should come in the next 30 days, ac­cord­ing to the email. Prax­is says it has reached out to the agency, which said it isn’t done fi­nal­iz­ing com­ments.

“The FDA has not pro­vid­ed any rea­son for the clin­i­cal hold,” Prax­is said in a state­ment. Ac­cord­ing to an S-1/A filed on Oct 15, the study would have sat­is­fied one of two reg­is­tra­tional tri­als re­quired by the FDA to sup­port clin­i­cal ef­fi­ca­cy. The biotech’s stock $PRAX plunged more than 26% af­ter the news broke on Tues­day.

Cowen an­a­lysts aren’t wor­ried, though. In a note to in­vestors on Tues­day, an­a­lysts Ritu Bar­al and Ly­la Youssef said they be­lieve the hold “should be re­solved in short or­der giv­en the con­tin­ued clean pre­clin­i­cal and clin­i­cal safe­ty pro­file.” The can­di­date, PRAX-114, is cur­rent­ly in an on­go­ing Phase IIa tri­al in Aus­tralia. Part A en­rolled 33 MDD pa­tients, and ear­ly da­ta sug­gest “rapid, marked im­prove­ments in de­pres­sion scores” af­ter two weeks of treat­ment, ac­cord­ing to the an­a­lysts. Af­ter one week, pa­tients showed LS mean Hamil­ton De­pres­sion Rat­ing Scale im­prove­ments of 15 to 19 points across three dose groups.

The can­di­date, GA­BA pos­i­tive al­losteric mod­u­la­tor, is al­so in Phase II tri­als for per­i­menopausal de­pres­sion. The field is a tough one, with sci­en­tists strug­gling for years to de­vel­op bet­ter an­ti-de­pres­sants. Last De­cem­ber, Sage Ther­a­peu­tics’ MDD drug flopped in a large tri­al, cost­ing the com­pa­ny $6 bil­lion in mar­ket cap and forc­ing it to cut half of em­ploy­ees.

If PRAX-114 gets ap­proved, Cowen pre­dicts its US sales po­ten­tial will  be in the $3 bil­lion range.

Prax­is emerged from stealth mode this spring, with $100 mil­lion and two drugs in Phase II. It ini­tial­ly set out to iden­ti­fy mu­ta­tions that cause epilep­sy in pa­tients who didn’t in­her­it the dis­ease, and is now ap­ply­ing those dis­cov­er­ies to oth­er CNS dis­eases, like de­pres­sion, move­ment dis­or­ders and pain syn­dromes. In Ju­ly, Prax­is bagged an­oth­er $110 mil­lion in a Se­ries C1 led by Even­tide As­set Man­age­ment.

Even­tide holds 9.4% of Prax­is’ stock, ac­cord­ing to the S-1/A. Black­stone, No­vo Hold­ings and Vi­da Ven­tures, which al­so kicked in on the round, have 23.1%, 6/6% and 7.3% re­spec­tive­ly.

Back in Au­gust, Prax­is filed for a $100 mil­lion IPO. It end­ed up bring­ing in $190 mil­lion, from $10 mil­lion shares priced at $19 apiece — a buck high­er than the $17 to $18 range. Be­tween $70 to $80 mil­lion was tagged for PRAX-114.

The co-owner of a Florida-based clinical research site pleaded guilty to lying to an FDA investigator during a 2017 inspection, revealing that she falsely portrayed part of a GlaxoSmithKline pediatric asthma study as legitimate, when in fact she knew that certain data had been falsified, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

Three other employees — Yvelice Villaman Bencosme, Lisett Raventos and Maytee Lledo — previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced in connection with falsifying data associated with the trial at the CRO Unlimited Medical Research.

New research shows how generic drug companies can successfully market a limited number of approved indications for a brand name drug, prior to coming to market for all of the indications. But several recent court decisions have created a layer of uncertainty around these so-called “skinny” labels.

While courts have generally allowed generic manufacturers to use their statutorily permitted skinny-label approvals, last summer, a federal circuit court found that Teva Pharmaceuticals was liable for inducing prescribers and patients to infringe GlaxoSmithKline’s patents through advertising and marketing practices that suggested Teva’s generic, with its skinny label, could be employed for the patented uses.