Af­ter los­ing its high-pro­file rheuma­toid arthri­tis part­ner­ship just two years ear­li­er, Sanofi’s Bel­gium-based biotech Abl­ynx could once again put an Ab­b­Vie pact on the chop­ping block af­ter post­ing a Phase II flop this morn­ing.

Abl­ynx re­port­ed out bad news that vo­bar­il­izum­ab dis­ap­point­ed yet again, fail­ing to meet its pri­ma­ry end­points in a Phase II lu­pus study. It’s the same drug that fiz­zled in RA, which Ab­b­Vie punt­ed back in 2016.

The drug was the sub­ject of a glob­al li­cens­ing agree­ment inked with Ab­b­Vie back in 2013, which came with an up­front pay­ment of $175 mil­lion and mile­stones up to $665 mil­lion. The deal gave Ab­b­Vie the op­tion to li­cense vo­bar­il­izum­ab in RA and in lu­pus. It’s un­clear what Ab­b­Vie will choose, but the fu­ture isn’t look­ing good for vo­bar­il­izum­ab.

Robert Zeldin

“Ab­b­Vie will re­view the com­plete da­ta set when avail­able from the Phase II Steady SLE study to de­ter­mine whether to ex­er­cise its op­tion to li­cense vo­bar­il­izum­ab,” Abl­ynx said in a state­ment. “Should Ab­b­Vie ex­er­cise the op­tion, it would trig­ger a pay­ment to Abl­ynx. If the op­tion is not ex­er­cised, Abl­ynx’s agree­ment with Ab­b­Vie would ter­mi­nate.”

Abl­ynx, which has a nanobody plat­form tech and sev­er­al drugs in its pipeline, was snatched up by Sanofi for $4.8 bil­lion in Jan­u­ary. That was af­ter shoot­ing down two pre­vi­ous bids from No­vo Nordisk. The deal got Sanofi Abl­ynx’s lead drug capla­cizum­ab, which has shown con­sid­er­able promise in treat­ing the ul­tra-rare blood clot­ting dis­or­der ac­quired throm­bot­ic throm­bo­cy­topenic pur­pu­ra (aTTP).

Still, the vo­bar­il­izum­ab fail­ure will like­ly sting. The failed Phase II study en­rolled 312 pa­tients with lu­pus across five treat­ment arms. Ad­verse events that led to study drug dis­con­tin­u­a­tion were re­port­ed in 12.4% of all vo­bar­il­izum­ab treat­ed pa­tients com­pared to 6.5% in the place­bo group. Two deaths were re­port­ed in the vo­bar­il­izum­ab group.

“We are dis­ap­point­ed that vo­bar­il­izum­ab didn’t show a dose re­sponse in the analy­sis of the study’s pri­ma­ry end­point, how­ev­er, vo­bar­il­izum­ab was well tol­er­at­ed in all test­ed dose groups, con­firm­ing its fa­vor­able safe­ty pro­file,” said Abl­ynx CMO Robert Zeldin in a state­ment. “We will con­tin­ue to an­a­lyze the full da­ta set and thank the study par­tic­i­pants and their fam­i­lies as well as the in­ves­ti­ga­tors and staff who con­tributed to this study.”

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.