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.

A month and a half after becoming the experimental treatment of choice for a newly diagnosed president, Regeneron’s antibody cocktail has received emergency use authorization from the FDA. It will be used to treat non-hospitalized Covid-19 patients who are at high-risk of progressing.

Although the Rgeneron drug is not the first antibody treatment authorized by the FDA, the news comes as a significant milestone for a company and a treatment scientists have watched closely since the outbreak began.

Two biotechs said they got turned away by the FDA on Wednesday, in part due to pandemic-related travel restrictions.

North Carolina-based Liquidia Technologies was handed a CRL for its lead pulmonary arterial hypertension drug, citing the need for more CMC data and on-site pre-approval inspections, which the FDA hasn’t been able to conduct due to travel restrictions. The agency also deferred its decision on Revance Therapeutics’ BLA for its frown line treatment, because it needs to inspect the company’s northern California manufacturing facility. The action, Revance emphasized, was not a CRL.

Xofluza was heralded as the first new flu drug in 20 years when it got the FDA OK back in 2018. But even so, Roche saw tough competition from cheaper Tamiflu generics that appeared to be nearly as — if not just as — effective.

Now, the pharma says the drug also can be used to prevent influenza after exposure, snagging a new approval and adding to Xofluza’s appeal as flu season meets the pandemic.