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.

Since losing a controversial court case over orphan drug exclusivity last year, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development has remained entirely silent on orphan exclusivity for any product approved since last November, leaving many sponsors in limbo on what to expect.

That silence means that for more than 70 orphan-designated indications for more than 60 products, OOPD has issued no public determination on the seven-year orphan exclusivity in the Orange Book, and no new listings of orphan exclusivity appear in OOPD’s searchable database, as highlighted recently by George O’Brien, a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington, DC office.

As the FDA remains silent on orphan drug exclusivity in the wake of a controversial court case, the agency continues to hand out new designations. The latest: Algernon Pharmaceuticals’ experimental lung disease drug ifenprodil.

The Vancouver-based company announced on Monday that ifenprodil received orphan designation in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic lung condition that results in scarring of the lungs.  Most IPF patients suffer with a dry cough, and breathing can become difficult.

We now know why Verve’s lead candidate was placed on hold last month by US regulators.

In an SEC filing, Verve laid out the FDA’s conditions for lifting the hold on its lead therapy, VERVE-101. That includes submitting preclinical data about potency differences in human versus non-human cells, risks of gene editing germline cells, and off-target analyses in non-hepatocyte cell types.

The FDA also wants clinical data from the ongoing Heart-1 trial, and to modify the trial protocol in the US to add additional contraceptive measures and increase the length of a staggering interval between the dosing of participants.

The first generation of personalized CAR-T therapies made big waves in the treatment of lymphoma for their stunning efficacy. Nkarta is hoping its off-the-shelf natural killer cell approach will stand out on safety — while keeping some of those impressive numbers on responses.

In a new update from its Phase I dose escalation study, the South San Francisco-based biotech reported that seven out of 10 patients treated with the highest doses of its NK cell therapy, NKX019, achieved a complete response, translating to a complete response rate of 70%.

A biotech centered on treating fibrosis — born out of Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — has received a financial boost.

According to an SEC filing, the company has raised $31,761,186 in its latest funding round, which includes 17 investors. The filing lists six names attached to the company, including Meredith Fisher, a partner at Mass General Brigham Ventures and Mediar’s acting CEO.