Gri­fols once paid Ar­a­digm $26 mil­lion for a stake in its in­haled an­tibi­otics. But with Ar­a­digm now in bank­rupt­cy, the Span­ish drug­mak­er is dish­ing out a fi­nal $3.2 mil­lion to buy it all.

The fire sale — which comes one year af­ter Ar­a­digm filed for Chap­ter 11 fol­low­ing a reg­u­la­to­ry tri­fec­ta for dis­as­ter — will see Gri­fols ob­tain as­sets and IP to Apul­miq (for­mer­ly Pul­maquin and Lin­haliq in Eu­rope), Lipo­quin and free ciprofloxacin. In ad­di­tion to waiv­ing its claims in the bank­rupt­cy case, Gri­fols al­so agreed to mile­stone pay­ments up to $3 mil­lion more up­on any reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals.

But they will have quite a few hur­dles to over­come. Reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies and out­side ex­perts alike made their skep­ti­cism to­ward Ar­a­digm’s da­ta clear. The FDA slapped down an ap­pli­ca­tion for Apul­miq and re­quest­ed a new Phase III tri­al back in 2017, and the com­pa­ny with­drew its sub­mis­sion in Eu­rope af­ter the EMA in­di­cat­ed it was go­ing to do the same.

Ar­a­digm’s idea had been to fight lung in­fec­tions with in­haled for­mu­la­tions of ciprofloxacin. Avail­able as pills, eye drops, ear drops and by IV, the an­tibi­ot­ic was al­ready de­ployed against a wide range of con­di­tions such as joint in­fec­tions, in­tra-ab­dom­i­nal in­fec­tions, in­fec­tious di­ar­rhea, res­pi­ra­to­ry tract in­fec­tions, skin in­fec­tions, ty­phoid fever and uri­nary tract in­fec­tions.

The Newark, CA-based com­pa­ny turned to an­tibi­otics af­ter an ef­fort, part­nered with No­vo Nordisk, to de­vel­op an in­hal­able form of in­sulin flailed.

Yet their Phase III stud­ies for Apul­miq in non-cys­tic fi­bro­sis bronchiec­ta­sis yield­ed mixed da­ta, as the drug on­ly hit the pri­ma­ry end­point — length­en­ing the me­di­an time to first pul­monary ex­ac­er­ba­tion — in one tri­al but not the oth­er.

Gri­fols did not elab­o­rate on what it now plans to do with the as­sets. It would like­ly in­volve a two-year tri­al that the FDA asked for but Ar­a­digm didn’t have the mon­ey to fund.

“Ex­clud­ed from the sale are all of the Com­pa­ny’s cash and cash equiv­a­lents, ac­counts or notes re­ceiv­able, cer­tain con­tracts, tan­gi­ble per­son­al prop­er­ty, the name Ar­a­digm Cor­po­ra­tion, ac­counts and records of Ar­a­digm Cor­po­ra­tion, all ben­e­fit plans and the shares of Ar­a­digm,” a state­ment not­ed.

Ar­a­digm was one of three an­tibi­otics play­ers to de­clare bank­rupt­cy last year. In a mar­ket where even com­pa­nies that come up with suc­cess­ful prod­ucts can’t sur­vive the com­mer­cial crunch, in­vestors seem to have even less pa­tience for the failed ones.

Following a promise last year to go “big and fast in breast cancer,” Gilead has secured a win for Trodelvy in the most common form.

The drug was approved to treat HR-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer patients who’ve already received endocrine-based therapy and at least two other systemic therapies for metastatic cancer, Gilead announced on Friday.

Trodelvy won its first indication in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer back in 2020, and has since added urothelial cancer to the list. HR-positive HER2-negative breast cancer accounts for roughly 70% of new breast cancer cases worldwide per year, according to senior VP of oncology clinical development Bill Grossman, and many patients develop resistance to endocrine-based therapies or worsen on chemotherapy.

Sanofi expects its RSV antibody jointly developed with AstraZeneca will be available next season, executive VP of vaccines Thomas Triomphe announced on the company’s quarterly call.

Beyfortus, also known as nirsevimab, was approved in the EU back in November and is currently under FDA review with an expected decision coming in the third quarter of this year. The news comes as the FDA plans to hold advisory committee meetings over the next couple months to review RSV vaccines from Pfizer and GSK.