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.

Re­my Luthringer Min­er­va

A to­tal of 365 pa­tients with no oth­er psy­chi­atric con­di­tions were en­rolled in the study and ran­dom­ized in­to five groups: three dif­fer­ent dos­es of sel­torex­ant, place­bo, and Am­bi­en. Un­like the house­hold drug, which pro­motes sleep by ac­ti­vat­ing the GA­BA neu­ro­trans­mit­ter, Min­er­va’s drug is “de­signed to mim­ic the nat­ur­al sleep process by in­hibit­ing the brain mech­a­nisms that pro­mote ex­ces­sive wake­ful­ness,” CEO Re­my Luthringer said in a state­ment.

The drug scored a clear win in im­prov­ing la­ten­cy to per­sis­tent sleep (LPS) com­pared to place­bo, as re­searchers tracked es­ca­lat­ing least squares mean on changes from base­line on Night 1: 16.4 min­utes (5 mg), 32.2 min­utes (10 mg) and 36.6 min­utes (20 mg), with p ≤0.001 on the two high­er dos­es. “Ad­van­tages over place­bo were al­so ob­served at Night 13: 5.2 min­utes for the 5 mg, 28.6 min­utes for the 10 mg (p ≤0.001), and 21.0 min­utes for the 20 mg (p ≤0.001),” the com­pa­ny added.

But per­haps more in­ter­est­ing were the sec­ondary analy­sis in which sel­torex­ant seems to work bet­ter than Am­bi­en in terms of LPS as well as WA­SO-6, a mea­sure­ment of dis­turbed sleep through­out the night. That was true on Night 13 on both scores, no­table be­cause Am­bi­en did not show su­pe­ri­or­i­ty over place­bo on the same night, like­ly due to a known, wan­ing ef­fect of the stan­dard-of-care drug.

Min­er­va had much less to say about safe­ty — a big deal on sleep drugs — oth­er than that it’s well tol­er­at­ed, with treat­ment-emer­gent ad­verse events (TEAEs) tak­ing place in 33.8% of pa­tients across the three drug arms com­pared to 49.3% in place­bo group and 42.5% in the Am­bi­en co­hort. The FDA sets a high bar on safe­ty for sleep drugs, cre­at­ing a chal­lenge that has kept most small play­ers out of a dif­fi­cult field. Mar­ket­ing is al­so a big chal­lenge, even for the ma­jor bio­phar­mas.

The sub­se­quent surge on share price $NERV — up 51.93% and reach­ing $6.43 — helped Min­er­va re­cov­er some lost grounds from the con­tro­ver­sial read­out in May. At one point pre-mar­ket trad­ing brought the stock over $7 but the en­thu­si­asm has sub­sided as in­vestors pon­der on the mar­ket­ing chal­lenges ly­ing ahead.

That tri­al saw a de­crease in the Mont­gomery-As­berg De­pres­sion Rat­ing Scale among the 20 mg group, where pa­tients were treat­ed with the oral pill along­side stan­dard an­ti­de­pres­sant ther­a­pies.

Ven­tur­ing in­to a field most biotechs have steered clear of, Min­er­va’s over­all propo­si­tion with sel­torex­ant is to treat in­som­nia and re­lat­ed mood dis­or­ders by tin­ker­ing with the orex­in sys­tem, which is as­so­ci­at­ed with feed­ing, home­osta­sis, arousal, mod­u­la­tion of sleep-wake cy­cles and mo­ti­va­tion. J&J signed on as a part­ner to the ORX2 in­hibitor on two in­di­ca­tions in 2014, but re­turned the rights for in­som­nia three years lat­er.

Pa­tients with de­pres­sion who al­so strug­gle to sleep — around 105 to­tal be­tween the drug and place­bo arms — showed a big­ger im­prove­ment in the MADRS than the over­all tri­al pop­u­la­tion, the com­pa­ny had re­port­ed.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

Hepatitis delta, also known as hepatitis D, is a liver infection caused by the hepatitis delta virus (HDV) that results in the most severe form of human viral hepatitis for which there is no approved therapy.

HDV is a single-stranded, circular RNA virus that requires the envelope protein (HBsAg) of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) for its own assembly. As a result, hepatitis delta virus (HDV) infection occurs only as a co-infection in individuals infected with HBV. However, HDV/HBV co-infections lead to more serious liver disease than HBV infection alone. HDV is associated with faster progression to liver fibrosis (progressing to cirrhosis in about 80% of individuals in 5-10 years), increased risk of liver cancer, and early decompensated cirrhosis and liver failure.
HDV is the most severe form of viral hepatitis with no approved treatment.
Approved nucleos(t)ide treatments for HBV only suppress HBV DNA, do not appreciably impact HBsAg and have no impact on HDV. Investigational agents in development for HBV target multiple new mechanisms. Aspirations are high, but a functional cure for HBV has not been achieved nor is one anticipated in the forseeable future. Without clearance of HBsAg, anti-HBV investigational treatments are not expected to impact the deadly course of HDV infection anytime soon.

More than 3 years after Merck stepped up and paid $1 billion in cold, hard cash to gain the US commercial rights to Bayer’s high-risk heart drug vericiguat in a broad-ranging cardio alliance, the partners say their Phase III study has come through with promising data and a date with regulators.
We don’t have the data, and won’t until they put it out at an upcoming scientific session, but Merck touted the results, saying that their big Phase III VICTORIA study hit the primary endpoint  — with vericiguat combined with available therapies reducing “the risk of the composite endpoint of heart failure hospitalization or cardiovascular death in patients with worsening chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) compared to placebo when given in combination with available heart failure therapies.”
Depending on the hard data, and how it breaks out with the combinations used, this drug could pose a threat to Novartis’ blockbuster drug Entresto, currently at $1.6 billion while analysts expect peak sales to hit $4 billion.
The drug is a soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) stimulator, which Bayer and Merck have had high hopes for. Evidently, so did cardiologists. Cowen’s last analysis set potential sales at $400 million in 2024, but that number could go up significantly now.
Cowen’s Steve Scala noted this morning:
Vericiguat could be a lucrative product for Merck, and one with potentially under-appreciated value. At Cowen’s Therapeutics Conference in September 2019, 80% of specialists anticipated a positive result from VICTORIA whereas only 51% of investors shared this optimism.
Investigators recruited more than 5,000 patients at more than 600 centers in 42 countries for this study — one of the most expensive propositions in R&D. Millions of people in the US suffer from heart failure with reduced ejection fraction when the failing heart fails to contract properly to eject blood into the system. Bayer holds ex-US rights to the drug and also stands to earn cash from the $1.1 billion in milestones Merck agreed on for their collaboration.
Remarkably, the drug was pushed into Phase III despite failing the mid-stage trial — though investigators flagged a success at the high dose of 10 mg. In VICTORIA, researchers started patients at 2.5 mg and then titrated up to 5 and then 10 mg.

Thirteen of the top biotech venture capitalists in the country wrote a letter last week warning lawmakers that if Congress passes a drug pricing bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put before lawmakers, they won’t be able to invest in biomedical research at their current rate, and patients will suffer.

“If policies such as those included within H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, are passed, our ability to continue to invest in future biomedical innovation will be severely constrained, thus crushing the hopes of millions of patient waiting for the next breakthroughs to treat or cure their cancers, rare genetic diseases, Alzheimer’s, or other serious and life-threatening conditions,” they wrote in a letter addressed to the highest-ranking Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate and acquired by Endpoints News. 

Turns out Dicerna wasn’t done with deals yet after locking in $200 million upfront from Roche for a hepatitis B cocktail two weeks ago.

Novo Nordisk has signed on as the latest partner to its GalXC RNAi platform, handing over $175 million in cash to claim any and all targets of interest in liver-related cardio-metabolic diseases that are not already reserved in previous pacts. The Danish drugmaker — which has signaled its interest to expand considerably beyond its core diabetes franchise into areas like NASH — is also purchasing $50 million worth of Dicerna’s equity at a 25% premium of $21.93 per share. More research payments and milestones extending to the billions are on the line.

→ Gene therapy maker Orchard Therapeutics has been granted an accelerated assessment for OTL-200 by the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP). The gene therapy — in development in partnership with the San Raffaele-Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (SR-Tiget) in Milan, Italy — being used towards the treatment of metachromatic leukodystrophy.

→ Pharmaceutical Product Development has announced that its parent company, PPD, Inc has submitted a draft to the SEC relating to the proposal of an IPO of the parent company’s common stock. Number of shares and price range have not yet been determined.