Durect’s shares are crash­ing again.

Two years af­ter a No­var­tis-part­nered Phase III flop sent them in­to pen­ny stock ter­ri­to­ry, Durect has failed an­oth­er tri­al for a top can­di­date. This time, though, the biotech may have bet­ter fall­back op­tions.

DUR-928, the lead drug in Durect’s epi­ge­net­ic reg­u­la­tor pro­gram, was test­ed in 28 plaque pso­ri­a­sis pa­tients. Each pa­tient served as their own con­trol, with the drug ad­min­is­tered to one arm and the place­bo ad­min­is­tered to the oth­er. The good news was that there was no mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence in ad­verse ef­fects be­tween the two arms. The bad news was there didn’t seem to be much of a dif­fer­ence at all, as DUR-928 “did not demon­strate a ben­e­fit over ve­hi­cle (place­bo)” and missed all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary end­points.

Durect’s shares $DR­RX, which had been ris­ing for months, fell 34% to $2.50.

Durect an­nounced it is dis­con­tin­u­ing the top­i­cal pso­ri­a­sis pro­gram, but that is on­ly one of the three in­di­ca­tions in which the biotech is test­ing DUR-928. They al­so have an in­jectable form of the drug in Phase II for al­co­holic he­pati­tis and an oral form in Phase I for non­al­co­holic steato­hep­ati­tis, bet­ter known as NASH. Pos­i­tive re­sults came out for the al­co­holic he­pati­tis pro­gram in No­vem­ber; pa­tients in the treat­ment arm saw a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in biliru­bin, the yel­low sub­stance in bile that gives pa­tients the well-known jaun­diced look.

The tri­al fail­ure comes as the biotech pre­pares for a key reg­u­la­to­ry date for the No­var­tis-part­nered drug, a post-op­er­a­tion non-opi­oid pain drug now called Posimir. The drug has had a rocky his­to­ry, in­clud­ing a 2012 tri­al fail­ure, a 2014 CRL from the FDA, and a 2016 re­quest from the agency to change their tri­al de­sign, help­ing lead to the 2017 fail­ure.

Durect re­spond­ed to the CRL this past June, repack­ag­ing their orig­i­nal sub­mis­sion to fo­cus on six tri­als. It’s not yet clear what the FDA will say, but the new sub­mis­sion con­vinced the agency to de­lay an ear­ly PDU­FA date of De­cem­ber 27 and give the biotech an ad­comm meet­ing for lat­er this month.

The Durect pro­gram with the most po­ten­tial, though, may end up be­ing their long-act­ing in­jectable HIV can­di­date, part of their SABER plat­form. Gilead paid $25 mil­lion up­front and promised mil­lions more in mile­stones to latch on­to that plat­form. They op­tioned the HIV drug in Sep­tem­ber for a $10 mil­lion pay­ment.

Amgen is the latest pharma company to appear on the radar of Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR), who is investigating the way pharma companies are using subsidiaries in low- or zero-tax countries to lower their tax bills.

Like its peers Merck, AbbVie and Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyden notes how Amgen uses its Puerto Rico operations to consistently pay tax rates that are substantially lower than the U.S. corporate tax rate of 21%, with an effective tax rate of 10.7% in 2020 and 12.1% in 2021.

After controversially spinning out its talc liabilities and filing for bankruptcy in an attempt to settle 38,000 lawsuits, Johnson & Johnson is now changing up the formula for its baby powder products.

J&J is beginning the transition to an all cornstarch-based baby powder portfolio, the pharma giant announced on Thursday — just months after a federal judge ruled in favor of its “Texas two-step” bankruptcy to settle allegations that its talc products contained asbestos and caused cancer. An appeals court has since agreed to revisit that case.