Su­per­nus had a bad Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day, the Mary­land biotech an­nounced that two dif­fer­ent ther­a­pies had been shot back by the FDA. The agency re­ject­ed their ap­pli­ca­tion to ap­prove SPN-812, an ex­per­i­men­tal AD­HD med­ica­tion for kids and ado­les­cents. And they re­fused to even con­sid­er an ap­pli­ca­tion for SPN-830, a con­tin­u­ous treat­ment pump meant for Parkin­son’s dis­ease.

The re­jec­tion is a sig­nif­i­cant blow to Su­per­nus, which in­vest­ed in four clin­i­cal tri­als for the AD­HD med. The FDA doesn’t dis­close its rea­son­ing for re­ject­ing a drug, but the com­pa­ny said it had to do with CMC is­sues, rather than safe­ty or ef­fi­ca­cy con­cerns. An in-house lab that does an­a­lyt­ic test­ing re­cent­ly changed lo­ca­tions, they said, rais­ing ques­tions in the agency about qual­i­ty con­trol.

Su­per­nus said they plan to “clar­i­fy to the FDA” that they do “not re­ly sole­ly on this fa­cil­i­ty” for qual­i­ty con­trol and then dis­cuss how to re­sub­mit their ap­pli­ca­tion.

The com­pa­ny was less forth­com­ing on why the agency re­fused to file their Parkin­son’s ap­pli­ca­tion. “In the let­ter, the FDA re­quest­ed cer­tain doc­u­ments and re­ports to be sub­mit­ted in sup­port of the ap­pli­ca­tion,” the com­pa­ny said.

Su­per­nus stock $SUPN fell 18%  on the news pre-mar­ket, from 24.95 to 20.35.

Jack Khat­tar

Ex­pec­ta­tions around the AD­HD drug, how­ev­er, had al­ready be­gun to wane. Su­per­nus CEO Jack Khat­tar has billed SPN-812 as the “first tru­ly new ther­a­py” for AD­HD in a decade, but the re­sults in late-stage tri­als fell short of ex­pec­ta­tions.

Al­though pos­i­tive, their first cut of the Phase III study ap­peared to show an ef­fect size no greater than a ri­val Eli Lil­ly drug and failed to show a dose-de­pen­dent re­sponse in the high dose, wor­ry­ing in­vestors. The com­pa­ny has point­ed to da­ta sug­gest­ing their treat­ment can work faster, with pa­tients feel­ing the ef­fect af­ter one week as op­posed to sev­er­al weeks.

The SPN-830 Parkin­son’s pump was part of their $300 mil­lion buy­out of the Ken­tucky-based neu­ro­science com­pa­ny US WorldMeds. Su­per­nus en­vi­sioned it as an al­ter­na­tive to more in­va­sive pro­ce­dures for pa­tients strug­gling with symp­toms, such as the gas­tric tubes some­times used to pro­vide con­tin­u­ous dos­ing of L-Dopa.

Since losing a controversial court case over orphan drug exclusivity last year, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development has remained entirely silent on orphan exclusivity for any product approved since last November, leaving many sponsors in limbo on what to expect.

That silence means that for more than 70 orphan-designated indications for more than 60 products, OOPD has issued no public determination on the seven-year orphan exclusivity in the Orange Book, and no new listings of orphan exclusivity appear in OOPD’s searchable database, as highlighted recently by George O’Brien, a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington, DC office.

As the global biologics market is expected to hit nearly the half-trillion-dollar mark this year, new JAMA research points to the importance of timely biosimilar entry, particularly as fewer biosimilars are entering the US than in Europe, and as monthly treatment costs for biosimilars were “substantially higher” in the US compared with Germany and Switzerland.

Among the three countries, biosimilar market share at launch was highest in Germany, but increased at the fastest rate in the US, the authors from the University of Zurich’s Institute of Law wrote in JAMA Network Open today.

The European Medicines Agency said Friday that it’s pulling from all European markets pholcodine-containing medicines, which are an opioid used in adults and children for the treatment of dry cough and in combo with other drugs as a treatment for cold and flu.

The decision to pull the medicines comes as the EMA points to the results from the recent ALPHO study, which show that use of pholcodine during the 12 months preceding anesthesia is linked to a risk of an anaphylactic reaction related to the neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) used (with an adjusted OR of 4.2, and a 95% confidence interval of 2.5 to 6.9).

It is no secret that drug shortages have been prevalent in 2022. Several major drug products, such as amoxicillin and Adderall, have been in short supply for several months and have led to members of Congress applying pressure on the FDA and HHS to resolve the situation.

Speaking at a webinar hosted by the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, Valerie Jensen, the associate director of the FDA’s Drug Shortage Staff, noted both the rise in quality-related issues and increased demand for some products. She called on companies to report such demand increases, even though they are not currently required to do so.