More than two years af­ter As­traZeneca in-li­censed Synair­gen’s lead drug, the phar­ma gi­ant $AZN has had to scrap a Phase IIa study of the in­haled in­ter­fer­on be­ta for asth­ma. And the British biotech’s stock quick­ly tanked on the lat­est sna­fu to af­flict As­traZeneca.

The biotech said ear­ly Wednes­day that As­traZeneca opt­ed to halt the study ear­ly af­ter de­ter­min­ing that an over­all low num­ber of ex­ac­er­ba­tions among the asth­ma pa­tients re­cruit­ed would make it dif­fi­cult to see if they could ac­tu­al­ly hit the pri­ma­ry end­point that had been laid out. But in­ves­ti­ga­tors still plan to sift through the da­ta to see how the drug did on sec­ondary goals.

It all sound­ed like a mess to in­vestors, who pulled the plug on Synair­gen’s stock (LSE: SNG). Shares skid­ded down 36% Wednes­day morn­ing, shrink­ing the mi­cro­cap’s mar­ket val­ue.

As­traZeneca in-li­censed AZD9412 back in 2014 in a deal that start­ed small and then had a shot at swelling to $232 mil­lion. Asth­ma was the first tar­get, with plans to ex­pand that to COPD if they were suc­cess­ful. It was one of many deals that As­traZeneca struck around that time as it looked to mount a turn­around.

Suc­cess, though, has been elu­sive at As­traZeneca, which has ex­pe­ri­enced a se­ries of R&D set­backs this year as the Big Phar­ma out­fit start­ed to auc­tion off prod­ucts that had ei­ther gone off the rails or no longer fit in­to their pipeline plans.

Said Pro­fes­sor Stephen Hol­gate:

“New treat­ments to pre­vent se­vere ex­ac­er­ba­tions are need­ed and most ex­ac­er­ba­tions are caused by the com­mon cold and flu. Un­ex­pect­ed­ly, colds did not cause as many asth­ma ex­ac­er­ba­tions as were pre­dict­ed in this clin­i­cal tri­al pop­u­la­tion. We hope to learn from the re­sults of this tri­al which pop­u­la­tion with­in se­vere asth­ma, or oth­er res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases, will most ben­e­fit from AZD9412 and should be in­clud­ed in fu­ture tri­als.”

The FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence has been a bright spot within the agency in terms of speeding new treatments to patients. That flexibility was on full display this morning as FDA released new draft guidance spelling out exactly how oncology drug developers can fulfill both the accelerated and full approval’s requirements with just a single randomized controlled trial.

While Congress recently passed legislation that will allow FDA to require confirmatory trials to be recruiting and ongoing prior to granting an accelerated approval, the agency is now making clear that the initial trial used to win the AA, if designed appropriately, can also serve as the trial for converting the accelerated approval into a full approval.

US regulators cleared an ultra-rare drug from Pharming Group, by way of Novartis, on Friday afternoon.

The Dutch biotech said the FDA greenlit leniolisib for an immunodeficiency disease known as activated phosphoinositide 3-kinase delta (PI3Kδ) syndrome, or APDS. People 12 years and older can receive the oral drug, to be marketed as Joenja, beginning early next month, Pharming said, five days ahead of the decision deadline set by the FDA as part of a priority review.