Shares of Ax­some Ther­a­peu­tics $AXSM shot up Mon­day morn­ing on the sur­prise news that its lead drug scored sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­sults for Alzheimer’s ag­i­ta­tion, a rel­a­tive­ly green field in drug R&D, in what’s billed as a piv­otal Phase II/III tri­al. But the com­pa­ny will have plen­ty of high-risk work to do be­fore it can ex­pect an FDA ap­proval.

Com­ing off the ropes of a late-stage fail for AXS-05 in treat­ment-re­sis­tant de­pres­sion, the biotech re­ports that their drug scored well against a place­bo based on a care­giv­er-rat­ed scale of Alzheimer’s pa­tients’ be­hav­ior, which in­cludes track­ing episodes of scream­ing or hit­ting. At week 5 re­searchers tracked mean re­duc­tions from base­line of 15.4 points for AXS-05 and 11.5 points for place­bo, giv­ing them a p val­ue of 0.010.

The drug, a com­bi­na­tion of 2 ther­a­pies — dex­tromethor­phan and bupro­pi­on — al­so beat out bupro­pi­on alone. And the drug achieved su­pe­ri­or­i­ty at week 3, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny.

An­a­lysts, mean­while, have been pri­mar­i­ly track­ing this drug’s po­ten­tial in ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der, where the com­pa­ny is lin­ing up a near-term ap­pli­ca­tion with the FDA af­ter re­port­ing up­beat da­ta in one of the tough­est fields in R&D. That left ex­pec­ta­tions low as the biotech ac­cel­er­at­ed the study read­out due to Covid-19 in­to Q2 from Q3.

Marc Good­man at SVB Leerink re­cent­ly not­ed:

In fact, we don’t be­lieve in­vestors in­clude any­thing for this in­di­ca­tion, and with good da­ta, we would as­sume the stock could be up $18 if in­vestors as­sume $650M of added peak sales at 50% POS, which we think is very rea­son­able.

Ac­tu­al­ly, the ini­tial re­sponse was much bet­ter than that, as Ax­some stock gy­rat­ed up more than 40% on the news. This is an un­cer­tain are­na, though, with re­searchers of­ten forced to stick with dif­fi­cult end­points and tough place­bo re­spons­es as care­givers track re­spons­es.

Good­man and oth­ers like to point out that no oth­er drug has been specif­i­cal­ly ap­proved for Alzheimer’s ag­i­ta­tion, leav­ing this a big op­por­tu­ni­ty. But oth­ers have tried and failed to make the da­ta stick, and this is an area where reg­u­la­tors will like­ly de­mand plen­ty of pos­i­tive da­ta.

Ot­su­ka’s Avanir un­der­scored just how dif­fi­cult this could be with their pro­gram for AVP-786 — deudex­tromethor­phan hy­dro­bro­mide [d6-DM]/quini­dine sul­fate) — which first scored a win in the first Phase III and then flopped in the sec­ond last fall.

Four years ago, when Arena CEO Amit Munshi cut its ties to a troubled weight drug and doubled down on the pipeline, a cannabinoid receptor 2 agonist figured prominently in the biotech’s future. On Tuesday evening, however, Munshi’s high hopes for the drug took a nasty hit after it failed a Phase IIb study for patients with irritable bowel syndrome pain.

Put through a randomized pace with 273 patients, researchers said it flat failed the primary endpoint among the large group with abdominal pain. But they quickly went on to highlight subgroup data, always a tricky and controversial ploy, where they spotlighted a positive p value for patients with moderate to severe pain who received the high dose of the drug — one of 3 provided in the study.

As the superbug crisis heats up around the world, Scynexis says it has new data from two interim analyses that prove its antifungal has the potential to treat a broad range of infections.

“The need for new anti-infectives capable of fighting the most resistant pathogens has never been more urgent as we confront the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic,” CEO Marco Taglietti said in a statement.

When Takeda spun out a pipeline of experimental psychiatry drugs to Neurocrine in a $2 billion deal amid a post-merger shakeout, R&D chief Andy Plump described the therapies as “very interesting but still difficult.”

On Tuesday, we got some idea of how difficult.

San Diego-based Neurocrine revealed that one of the three spotlight clinical programs they’d acquired failed the primary endpoint in a Phase II trial for schizophrenia, registering a negative outcome on the change from baseline in the positive and negative syndrome scale/negative symptom factor score (PANSS NSFS).

Merck took a big gamble when it opted to jump into the Covid-19 vaccine race late, and made an equally momentous decision to back out in late January. Now, looking to chip in on the effort, Merck reportedly agreed to team up with one of the companies that has already crossed the finish line.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday is expected to announce a partnership between drugmakers Merck and Johnson & Johnson to jointly produce J&J’s recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine that received the FDA’s emergency use authorization Saturday, the Washington Post reported.

FibroGen will likely have to delay its US rollout for roxadustat once again.

In an unexpected move, the FDA is convening its Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee to review the NDA in an advisory committee meeting. The date is yet to be confirmed.

Just a few weeks ago, SVB Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges predicted that the roxa approval could come ahead of the PDUFA date on March 20 — effusive despite already being let down once by the FDA’s extension of its review back in December. AstraZeneca, which is partnered with FibroGen on the chronic kidney disease-related anemia drug, disclosed regulators had requested further clarifying analyses of clinical data.