Two years af­ter Newron $NWRN came up with a mixed set of Phase IIa da­ta for its an­tipsy­chot­ic eve­namide, the FDA is halt­ing their move in­to piv­otal work while the biotech ex­plores the im­pli­ca­tions of some new safe­ty con­cerns re­gard­ing the drug.

Ravi Anand Newron

Those con­cerns in­volve sig­nals spot­ted in a new­ly com­plet­ed rat study — which were not ex­plained — as well as “CNS events at high­er dos­es in dogs, and the po­ten­tial im­pli­ca­tion of these find­ings for pa­tients.” Reg­u­la­tors now want to see some new an­i­mal and hu­man stud­ies done to ad­dress the safe­ty is­sue be­fore they launch Phase II/III.

Back when I last cov­ered the drug in ear­ly 2017, the CMO was quite con­fi­dent that Newron was on to some­thing. The mean change for the Pos­i­tive and Neg­a­tive Syn­drome Scale (PANSS) score over­all was -5.1 for the add-on com­pared to -3.7 for the place­bo, which Newron chief med­ical of­fi­cer Ravi Anand de­scribed as “very close” to sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance. If you just looked at the pos­i­tive side of the scale, he added, the re­sults were sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

That’s bor­der­line, but the Ital­ian biotech clear­ly felt it was worth pur­su­ing.

Anand now is in con­tact with the FDA to work out the next round of safe­ty work to clear up the is­sues, with the com­pa­ny “con­fi­dent that they can be ad­dressed sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly.”

Its shares were knocked down 12% Tues­day morn­ing.

Blue­bird bio $BLUE has un­veiled its price for the new­ly ap­proved gene ther­a­py Zyn­te­glo (Lenti­Glo­bin), which came as a big sur­prise. And it wasn’t the on­ly un­ex­pect­ed twist in to­day’s sto­ry.

With some an­a­lysts bet­ting on a $900,000 price for the β-tha­lassemia treat­ment in Eu­rope, where reg­u­la­tors pro­vid­ed a con­di­tion­al ear­ly OK, blue­bird CEO Nick Leschly said Fri­day morn­ing that the pa­tients who are suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed with their drug over 5 years will be charged twice that — $1.8 mil­lion — on the con­ti­nent. That makes this drug the sec­ond most ex­pen­sive ther­a­py on the plan­et, just be­hind No­var­tis’ new­ly ap­proved Zol­gens­ma at $2.1 mil­lion, with an­a­lysts still wait­ing to see what kind of pre­mi­um can be had in the US.

Re­gen­eron’s close­ly-watched bis­pe­cif­ic con­tin­ues to ring up high re­sponse rates

Re­gen­eron’s high-pro­file bis­pe­cif­ic REGN1979 is back in the spot­light at the Eu­ro­pean Hema­tol­ogy As­so­ci­a­tion sci­en­tif­ic con­fab. And while the stel­lar num­bers we saw at ASH have erod­ed some­what as more blood can­cer pa­tients are eval­u­at­ed, the re­sponse rates for this CD3/CD20 drug re­main high.

A to­tal of 13 out of 14 fol­lic­u­lar lym­phomas re­spond­ed to the drug, a 93% ORR, down from 100% at the last read­out. In 10 out of 14, there was a com­plete re­sponse. In dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma the re­sponse rate was 57% among pa­tients treat­ed at the 80 mg to 160 mg dose range. They were all com­plete re­spons­es. And 2 of these Cars were for pa­tients who had failed CAR-T ther­a­py.

In­vestors are in no mood to hear biotechs tout the suc­cess of a “key” sec­ondary end­point when the piv­otal Phase III flunks the pri­ma­ry goal. Just ask Savara. 

The Texas biotech $SVRA went look­ing for a sil­ver lin­ing as com­pa­ny ex­ecs blunt­ly con­ced­ed that Mol­gradex, an in­haled for­mu­la­tion of re­com­bi­nant hu­man gran­u­lo­cyte-macrophage colony-stim­u­lat­ing fac­tor (GM-CSF), failed to spur sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved treat­ment out­comes for pa­tients with a rare res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­ease called au­toim­mune pul­monary alve­o­lar pro­teinosis, or aPAP.

Late-stage da­ta pre­sent­ed at the Amer­i­can Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion an­nu­al meet­ing in 2010 pushed Eli Lil­ly to put a crimp on teplizum­ab as the phar­ma gi­ant found it un­able to re­set the clock on new­ly di­ag­nosed type 1 di­a­betes. At the same con­fer­ence but in dif­fer­ent hands nine years lat­er, the drug is mak­ing a crit­i­cal come­back by scor­ing suc­cess in an­oth­er niche: de­lay­ing the on­set of the dis­ease.

In a Phase II tri­al with 76 high-risk in­di­vid­u­als — rel­a­tives of pa­tients with type 1 di­a­betes who have di­a­betes-re­lat­ed au­toan­ti­bod­ies in their bod­ies — teplizum­ab al­most dou­bled the me­di­an time of di­ag­no­sis com­pared to place­bo (48.4 months ver­sus 24.4 months). The haz­ard ra­tio for di­ag­no­sis was 0.41 (p=0.006).