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.’

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