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

The average level of investment required for a biotech start-up to succeed is increasing every year, elevating the pressure even further on venture capital to make smart financial investments. Financial investment alone, however, does not always guarantee that exciting innovations can be transformed into real businesses that make a meaningful difference to patients.

Beyond just capital

At Astellas Venture Management (AVM) – a wholly-owned venture capital organization within Astellas, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area – capital is just one of the ingredients we offer to add value to our biotechnology investments and partnerships. We generally take a strategic investor approach for companies in our invested portfolio, providing access to expertise, technology and/or resources in addition to the injection of finance. An equity investment from AVM can include access to Astellas’ research and development (R&D) capabilities and expertise, and a global network of partner academic institutions and biotechnology companies, to help advance and accelerate the start-up’s innovation.

Unum $UMRX is working its way through a survival plan of sorts.

After getting hit with a trio of FDA holds in its brief public history and triggering its second pivot to a new lead drug program while laying off 60% of the staff, the troubled penny stock biotech Unum Therapeutics has hatched new plans to secure financial backing while lining up a go-forward strategy for the company.

First, Lincoln Park Capital Fund has agreed to buy up to $25 million of the long-suffering stock, as Unum directs. And the executive team — led by CEO Chuck Wilson — has put everything on the table for consideration: a sale, acquisition, merger, licensing deal, you name it. The ACTR707 program, meanwhile, is being formally wrapped up — their second failed lead program.