FDA ex­perts of­fer a big thumbs up for J&J’s flawed ap­pli­ca­tion for ke­t­a­mine-based de­pres­sion drug — but tri­al fail­ures, safe­ty ques­tions spur con­cerns

J&J may have a deeply flawed ap­pli­ca­tion for its new/old drug to treat ma­jor de­pres­sion, but the re­searchers who turned out to present the case for es­ke­t­a­mine en­coun­tered a re­cep­tive au­di­ence of FDA ex­perts on Tues­day. 

By a wide mar­gin — 14 yes, 2 no and 1 ab­sten­tion — the pan­el con­clud­ed that J&J had of­fered “sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence of the ef­fec­tive­ness of es­ke­t­a­mine,” an in­tranasal ver­sion of a pow­er­ful anes­thet­ic called ke­t­a­mine, bet­ter known in par­ty cir­cles as ‘Spe­cial K.’

The key safe­ty is­sue is the known link be­tween the long­time use of ke­t­a­mine and neu­ro­tox­i­c­i­ty. The re­searchers re­lied on pre­clin­i­cal dog and rat stud­ies to make their case — hard­ly the gold stan­dard on safe­ty da­ta. But the pan­el seemed con­tent that a long-term safe­ty study on a post­mar­ket­ing ba­sis would be enough to war­rant an OK now, with 15 vot­ing that J&J had suc­cess­ful­ly out­lined the safe­ty pro­file for an ini­tial ap­proval. And at least one of the au­thor­i­ties not­ed that cur­rent­ly used de­pres­sion drugs al­so have safe­ty is­sues with long­time use.

The mon­ey ques­tion:

Do the ben­e­fits out­weigh the risks? Yes: 14. No: 2. Ab­stain: 1.

J&J calls es­ke­t­a­mine — which they plan to mar­ket as Spra­va­to — the first drug with a new mech­a­nism of ac­tion in de­pres­sion for some 30 years. Of course, ke­t­a­mine has al­so been used off-la­bel for de­pres­sion for years. It’s an NM­DA drug, with ri­vals in the clin­ic from var­i­ous bio­phar­ma com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Al­ler­gan.

“Ke­t­a­mine is a nasty drug,” not­ed pan­el mem­ber Steven Meisel, sys­tem di­rec­tor of med­ica­tion safe­ty at Fairview Health Ser­vices/Health­east Care Sys­tem. “It’s been around for 50 years….But ob­vi­ous­ly we’re us­ing low­er dos­es.” Meisel, though, was im­pressed by a sur­vey re­searchers com­plet­ed that high­light­ed just how much these pa­tients need­ed a new ther­a­py.

“You don’t take that pa­tient’s voice as of­ten as you should in this space.”

“The vast ma­jor­i­ty of these pa­tients will take the risks,” he added. “I think that’s very im­por­tant….”

Two of the stud­ies failed to meet the pri­ma­ry out­come, and that raised con­cerns. 

“What prece­dent is set when 2 of 3 short­er ef­fi­ca­cy stud­ies didn’t meet the pri­ma­ry end­point?” Meisel asked. “That’s some­thing the agency has to wres­tle with. “Do we set a prece­dent that may be hard to step back from.”

If the FDA goes ahead and of­fers a for­mal ap­proval, which looks in­creas­ing­ly like­ly in view of the neu­tral in­ter­nal re­view, they’ll be once again over­look­ing the agency’s gold stan­dard on 2 pos­i­tive, well con­trolled stud­ies. But that’s in­creas­ing­ly com­mon, es­pe­cial­ly un­der com­mis­sion­er Scott Got­tlieb.

J&J ex­pe­ri­enced sig­nif­i­cant fail­ures with this pro­gram, and has promis­ing da­ta from one late-stage study and a with­draw­al study, which the ex­perts and in­sid­ers seemed will­ing to ac­cept in lieu of a sec­ond well-con­trolled tri­al.

Es­ke­t­a­mine is one of J&J’s top late-stage drugs, which the phar­ma gi­ant be­lieves has block­buster mar­ket po­ten­tial. By all ap­pear­ances, they’ll soon be able to ex­plore just how big this drug can be.

Image courtesy of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson.

Pro­tect­ing the glob­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­no­va­tion ecosys­tem – what’s at stake?

We are living in a new era of healthcare that is rapidly advancing progress impacting patient outcomes and experiences. We’ve seen a remarkable pace of transformational innovation, applied research, and advanced clinical development over the last decade.

Despite this tremendous progress, there is much more work to be done, and patients are counting on us – now more than ever – to continue that momentum. At the heart of our industry is a focus on developing and delivering medicines for some of the world’s most challenging diseases, including those that have few or no effective treatments today.

Mi­rati’s drug sitra­va­tinib flops PhI­II in com­bo with Op­di­vo for cer­tain lung can­cer

Mirati Therapeutics’ path to a second drug approval will likely have to wait. The San Diego biotech company said Wednesday that its investigational lung cancer drug failed a Phase III trial testing it in combination with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo.

The drug, sitravatinib, and Opdivo weren’t better than the chemo drug docetaxel at keeping patients alive, Mirati said in a press release. The spectrum-selective kinase inhibitor missed the primary goal of overall survival in patients with second- or third-line advanced non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer.

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End­points 20(+2) un­der 40, 2023; Bio­phar­ma's high­est-paid CEOs; N-of-1 CRISPR sto­ry goes on af­ter tragedy; and more

Welcome back to Endpoints Weekly, your review of the week’s top biopharma headlines. Want this in your inbox every Saturday morning? Current Endpoints readers can visit their reader profile to add Endpoints Weekly. New to Endpoints? Sign up here.

We will be off Monday in observance of Memorial Day — and when we get back, it will be a straight march to ASCO, BIO and more. Enjoy the (long) weekend!

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Rich Horgan (R) with his late brother, Terry

Rich Hor­gan spear­head­ed a gene ther­a­py for his broth­er. The tri­al end­ed in tragedy, but the work con­tin­ues for more pa­tients

Rich Horgan’s quest to create a custom gene therapy for his brother, Terry, ended in tragedy. But Horgan doesn’t believe it’s the end of the story.

Terry, a 27-year-old patient with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, died last October just eight days after receiving the therapy in a clinical trial in which he was the only participant. The case raised questions about the safety of certain gene therapies and what would happen to other drug programs under a nonprofit that Horgan created, called Cure Rare Disease.

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Bio­phar­ma's 20 high­est-paid CEOs of 2022, each bring­ing in $20M+ pay­days

Even in a down year for much of the biopharma market, 20 CEOs brought in pay packages valued at more than $20 million, an Endpoints News analysis found.

Endpoints collected data on more than 350 CEO compensation packages, covering a wide range of pharma, biotech, and life sciences companies. All told, the 20 largest earners made over $725 million in 2022 — an average package of $36.4 million. Three brought in paydays over $50 million, and one CEO broke the $100 million mark.

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FDA ap­proves Lex­i­con’s heart-fail­ure drug af­ter de­feat in di­a­betes

The FDA on Friday approved Lexicon’s heart failure drug sotagliflozin following a string of setbacks for the pharma company, including an FDA rejection in diabetes and the loss of a development deal with Sanofi.

The dual SGLT1 and SGLT2 inhibitor will be marketed as Inpefa and is a once-daily tablet. It’s been approved to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death and heart failure-related hospitalization or urgent visits in adults with heart failure or type 2 diabetes mellitus, chronic kidney disease, and other cardiovascular risk factors. The label spans the range of left ventricular ejection fraction, including preserved ejection fraction and reduced ejection fraction, as well as patients with or without diabetes, Lexicon said Friday.

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The 20(+2) un­der 40: Your guide to the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers

This year’s list of 20 biotech leaders under the age of 40 includes a huge range of ambitions. Some of our honorees are planning to create the next big drug giant. Others are pushing the bounds of AI. One is working to revolutionize TB testing. All are compelling talents who are still young in age, but already far along in achievement.

And, as in years past, we went over. The 20 are actually 22 because of two double profiles that reflect how important teamwork is in the industry. As one of our honorees, Joe Illingworth of DJS Antibodies, told me in our interview, “It takes a village to raise a biotech.”

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Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion to re­ceive few­er Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vac­cine dos­es un­der amend­ed con­tract

The European Commission has made a few changes to its vaccine contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, reducing the dose volume while extending the delivery timeline to cope with “evolving public health needs.”

The Commission previously struck a contract in May 2021 for 900 million doses, with the option to purchase another 900 million. Of those, 450 million were expected to be delivered in 2023, though an amendment now calls for fewer doses. While neither the Commission nor Pfizer and BioNTech have revealed an exact amount, an unnamed source told Reuters that the amendment reduces the remaining expected doses by about a third.

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EMA rec­om­mends re­vok­ing au­tho­riza­tion of No­var­tis' sick­le cell drug

The European Medicines Agency’s committee for medicinal products for human use (CHMP) on Friday recommended revoking the marketing authorization for Novartis’ treatment for a painful complication related to sickle cell, after a recent study did not confirm its clinical benefit.

CHMP’s review looked at results of the STAND study, finding that Adakveo (crizanlizumab) did not reduce the number of painful crises leading to a healthcare visit, and patients treated with Adakveo had slightly more painful crises on average, with a subsequent healthcare visit, over the first year of treatment, compared with those on placebo.

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