A New York-based bio­phar­ma com­pa­ny now ex­pects a re­jec­tion from the FDA for its po­ten­tial mi­graine drug as it’s fac­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing ques­tions.

Ax­some Ther­a­peu­tics, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing on Mon­day, was in­formed by the FDA that chem­istry, man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­trols (CMC) is­sues were iden­ti­fied dur­ing the FDA’s re­view of NDA for its mi­graine can­di­date known as AXS-07, set­ting up the an­tic­i­pat­ed CRL.

The ex­act na­ture of the CMC is­sues is cur­rent­ly un­known, but the com­pa­ny’s stock price fell by about 20% ear­ly Mon­day.

In­vest­ment an­a­lysts at William Blair ex­pect the AXS-07 NDA to be de­layed by about a year, with six months to cor­rect the is­sues and six months for FDA to re-re­view.

“On our call, man­age­ment in­di­cat­ed that the CMC is­sues with AXS-07 in mi­graine were mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive of those that have been ad­dressed for AXS-05 in de­pres­sion,” the in­vestor note says. “We ex­pect ad­di­tion­al de­tails in the com­ing days once the com­pa­ny has re­ceived for­mal ac­tion from the FDA, po­ten­tial­ly on the com­pa­ny’s first-quar­ter earn­ings call sched­uled for May 2.”

William Blair al­so not­ed that these is­sues are ex­clu­sive to AXS-07, and have no link to any oth­er prod­ucts in de­vel­op­ment at Ax­some.

“In the mean­time, move­ment con­tin­ues on the AXS-05 re­view, with man­age­ment ex­pect­ing a reg­u­la­to­ry de­ci­sion this quar­ter, and we be­lieve the agree­ment on post-mar­ket­ing re­quire­ments is a pos­i­tive,” the Blair an­a­lysts wrote.

Back in 2020, af­ter clear­ing a late-stage study, Ax­some’s AXS-05 faced sev­er­al chal­lenges. The drug, which is meant to treat ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der, had then failed to meet its main goal for the AXS-05 pill, de­lay­ing any fur­ther ac­tion.

In 2021, the FDA ex­plained its con­cerns with AXS-05 in a let­ter, out­lin­ing how FDA had iden­ti­fied de­fi­cien­cies that pre­clude la­bel­ing dis­cus­sions with Ax­some.

How­ev­er, last week, AXS-05 ap­peared to be back on the cusp of ap­proval again.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted unanimously in favor of “harmonizing” Covid vaccine compositions, meaning all current vaccine recipients would receive a bivalent vaccine, regardless of whether they’ve gotten their primary series.

The vote marks an effort to clear up confusion around varying formulations and dosing schedules for current primary series and booster vaccines, as well as “get closer to the strains that are circulating,” according to committee member Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Eli Lilly has succeeded in its attempt to get the first non-covalent version of Bruton’s tyrosine kinase, or BTK, inhibitors to market, pushing it past rival Merck.

The FDA gave an accelerated nod to Lilly’s daily oral med, to be sold as Jaypirca, for patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma.

The agency’s green light, disclosed by the Indianapolis Big Pharma on Friday afternoon, catapults Lilly into a field dominated by covalent BTK inhibitors, which includes AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson’s Imbruvica, AstraZeneca’s Calquence and BeiGene’s Brukinsa.

Merck’s blockbuster cancer treatment Keytruda has been handed another indication by the FDA.

The US regulator announced on Thursday that it has approved Keytruda to serve as an adjuvant treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which is its fifth indication in NSCLC and 34th indication overall.

According to a Merck release, the approval is based on data from a Phase III trial, dubbed Keynote-091, which measured disease-free survival in patients who received chemotherapy following surgery. The data from Merck displayed that Keytruda cut down on the risk of disease recurrence or death by 27% versus placebo.

The FDA hasn’t detected any potential safety signals, including for stroke, in people aged 65 years and older who have received Pfizer’s bivalent Covid booster, one senior official told members of the agency’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on Thursday.

The update comes as the FDA and CDC investigate a “preliminary signal” that may indicate an increased risk of ischemic stroke in older Americans who received Pfizer’s updated shot.

The FDA has stopped use of another drug as a result of the new coronavirus variants. On Thursday, the agency announced that AstraZeneca’s antibody combo Evusheld, which was an important prevention option for many immunocompromised people and others, is no longer authorized.

The FDA said it made its decision based on the fact that Evusheld works on fewer than 10% of circulating variants.

Evusheld was initially given emergency authorization at the end of 2021. However, as Omicron emerged, so did studies that showed Evusheld might not work against the dominant Omicron strain. In October, the FDA warned healthcare providers that Evusheld was useless against the Omicron subvariant BA.4.6. It followed that up with another announcement earlier this month that it did not think Evusheld would work against the latest Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5.