There’s more bad news for the an­tibi­otics R&D field Thurs­day evening.

Ken Hillan

A few weeks af­ter the FDA green-light­ed Achao­gen’s $AKAO an­tibi­ot­ic Zem­dri (pla­zomicin) for uri­nary tract in­fec­tions but shunt­ed aside their ap­pli­ca­tion on blood­stream in­fec­tions, the biotech is lay­ing off rank-and-file re­searchers and let­ting go its top re­search ex­ecs.

Al­to­geth­er the com­pa­ny says it is cut­ting 80 jobs — 28% of the staff — as it chops spend­ing on ear­ly-stage re­search and de­vel­op­ment, tech­ni­cal op­er­a­tions and gen­er­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive ex­pens­es.

Lee Swem

Ken Hillan, pres­i­dent R&D, will leave in mid-Oc­to­ber, while CSO Lee Swem will de­part a few weeks ear­li­er.

Re­search will be nar­rowed to fo­cus on C-Scape, an oral be­ta-lac­tam/be­ta-lac­ta­mase in­hibitor com­bi­na­tion, and new amino­gly­co­side an­tibi­otics, which can count on some non-di­lu­tive fund­ing com­mit­ments to con­tin­ue the work. The main task at Achao­gen will be com­mer­cial­iz­ing their ap­proved prod­uct while hunt­ing a Eu­ro­pean OK to ex­pand that work.

For the past 10 years pub­lic health of­fi­cials have been rais­ing a hue and cry for new an­tibi­otics as old stan­dards strug­gle against a ris­ing tide of drug re­sis­tance. But the bulk of the need can still be met with cheap stand­by ther­a­pies, mak­ing it hard to prof­it by them. As a re­sult, Big Phar­ma bowed out large­ly, un­der­scored by No­var­tis’ re­cent de­ci­sion to join the ex­o­dus out of the field. As­traZeneca and oth­ers had done it years ago.

Af­ter get­ting beat up on all sides from mar­ket ob­servers who don’t much care for the lat­est mega-deal to ar­rive in bio­phar­ma, at least one promi­nent an­a­lyst now is start­ing to like what he sees in the num­bers for Ab­b­Vie/Al­ler­gan.

But it’s go­ing to take some en­cour­age­ment if Ab­b­Vie ex­ecs want it to last.

Ab­b­Vie’s mar­ket cap de­clined $20 bil­lion on Tues­day as the stock took at 17% hit dur­ing the day. And SVB Leerink’s Ge­of­frey Porges can see a dis­tinct out­line of an up­side af­ter re­view­ing the fun­da­men­tals of the deal.

Ako­rn just can’t dig it­self out of its hole.

The spe­cial­ty gener­ic drug­mak­er has re­ceived yet an­oth­er warn­ing let­ter from the FDA this year. With­out dis­clos­ing any specifics, the Lake For­est, Illi­nois-based drug­mak­er on Wednes­day said the US reg­u­la­tor had is­sued the let­ter, cit­ing an in­spec­tion of its Som­er­set, New Jer­sey man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Ju­ly and Au­gust of 2018. The com­pa­ny’s shares $AKRX dipped about 1.7% to $4.65 be­fore the bell.

Ac­er Ther­a­peu­tics’ bid to re­pur­pose celipro­lol — a be­ta-block­er on the mar­ket for hy­per­ten­sion — as a treat­ment for a rare, in­her­it­ed con­nec­tive tis­sue dis­or­der has hit a se­vere set­back. The New­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny on Tues­day said the FDA re­ject­ed the drug and has asked for an­oth­er clin­i­cal tri­al.

The com­pa­ny’s shares $AC­ER cratered near­ly 77% to $4.47 in Tues­day morn­ing trad­ing.

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

A month af­ter roil­ing in­vestors with what skep­tics dis­missed as cher­ry pick­ing of its de­pres­sion da­ta, Min­er­va is back with a clean slate of da­ta from its Phase IIb in­som­nia tri­al.

In a de­tailed up­date, the Waltham, MA-based biotech said sel­torex­ant (MIN-202) hit both the pri­ma­ry and sev­er­al sec­ondary end­points, ef­fec­tive­ly im­prov­ing sleep in­duc­tion and pro­long­ing sleep du­ra­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors made a point to note that the ef­fects were con­sis­tent across the adult and el­der­ly pop­u­la­tions, with the lat­ter more prone to the sleep dis­or­der.