Five months af­ter J&J threw in the tow­el on a big Phase III pro­gram for an­oth­er hep C cock­tail, its for­mer part­ner — and once high-fly­ing biotech — Achillion $ACHN is slash­ing staff and mount­ing a sur­vival plan around a re­struc­tured pipeline.

Joseph Tru­itt

One in 5 work­ers are be­ing pink slipped, which will leave 70 staffers at New Haven, CT-based Achillion.

The plan is to stay fo­cused on com­ple­ment al­ter­na­tive path­way work with a lead drug, ACH-4471, in Phase II for both C3 glomeru­lopa­thy and parox­ys­mal noc­tur­nal he­mo­glo­bin­uria. That oral fac­tor D in­hibitor should read out for C3G or IC-MPGN in the 3rd quar­ter.

J&J had once been a leader in the field of de­vel­op­ers work­ing on faster, bet­ter and cheap­er hep C cock­tails. But af­ter Gilead cured the dis­ease and Ab­b­Vie rolled out a low­er cost ri­val, the mar­ket peaked and then quick­ly be­gan to melt away, leav­ing lit­tle to fight over. The phar­ma gi­ant aban­doned their late-stage ef­fort last Sep­tem­ber, which in­clud­ed Achillion’s once hot­ly sought af­ter NS5A drug odalasvir (ACH-3102). The PNH tri­al will read out in the 4th quar­ter.

As part of the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion Joseph Tru­itt has been pro­mot­ed to pres­i­dent and COO.

Tru­itt re­marked:

I am par­tic­u­lar­ly en­thu­si­as­tic about our work in C3G where our mar­ket re­search has shed light on the un­der­served needs of these pa­tients who have a de­bil­i­tat­ing dis­ease that is be­lieved to be caused by an over­ac­tive AP. C3G af­fects at least 8,000 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States and the ma­jor Eu­ro­pean mar­kets, specif­i­cal­ly France, Ger­many, Italy, Spain and the Unit­ed King­dom, and there are no ap­proved treat­ments.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.

The US pharma giant Eli Lilly will be increasing its financial commitment to a manufacturing site in Ireland.

According to a release from Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) on Monday, Lilly will be investing another $500 million in its manufacturing facility in Limerick, Ireland — bringing the total investment into the facility to approximately $1 billion.

In January of last year, Lilly announced it was placing a $446 million investment into the site to expand active pharmaceutical ingredient and monoclonal antibody production.