Aca­cia Phar­ma did well on the R&D front — by 2017, it had con­duct­ed four pos­i­tive piv­otal clin­i­cal tri­als for its lead drug, Barhem­sys. Lat­er that year, it sub­mit­ted an FDA ap­pli­ca­tion to mar­ket the drug for res­cue treat­ment of pa­tients who de­vel­op post­op­er­a­tive nau­sea & vom­it­ing (PONV), de­spite hav­ing been giv­en pri­or antiemet­ic pro­phy­lax­is — on­ly to re­ceive a re­jec­tion in Oc­to­ber 2018.

The US agency made its de­ci­sion based on a pre-ap­proval in­spec­tion of a fa­cil­i­ty run by the con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er of the drug’s main in­gre­di­ent — amisul­pride — and not on clin­i­cal or non-clin­i­cal da­ta in the ap­pli­ca­tion, as­sured Aca­cia in a press re­lease, adding that the FDA had asked for no ex­tra stud­ies or da­ta analy­ses re­lat­ed to the treat­ment.

With re­newed en­thu­si­asm lat­er that month, Aca­cia said its con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er had agreed to “in­sti­tute a cor­rec­tive and pre­ven­tive ac­tion plan that will rec­ti­fy the de­fi­cien­cy iden­ti­fied as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. We con­tin­ue to plan for a launch in the first half of 2019,” Aca­cia chief Ju­lian Gilbert said in a state­ment.

Ju­lian Gilbert

Aca­cia then re­sub­mit­ted its mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion in De­cem­ber, in­di­cat­ing that the FDA’s con­cerns out­lined in the com­plete re­sponse let­ter had been re­solved. But on Fri­day, the com­pa­ny re­ceived an­oth­er re­jec­tion, with the FDA flag­ging the same con­cerns.

“We are on track to com­plete the qual­i­fi­ca­tion of an al­ter­na­tive sup­pli­er of amisul­pride and plan to en­gage with FDA as soon as pos­si­ble to de­ter­mine the most rapid route to ob­tain­ing ap­proval,” Gilbert said in a state­ment on Fri­day.

Barhem­sys is de­signed to help the 30-40% of sur­gi­cal pa­tients who suf­fer from PONV de­spite pri­or pro­phy­lax­is, as well as for com­bi­na­tion pro­phy­lax­is in high-risk pa­tients.

Cam­bridge, UK-based Aca­cia Phar­ma, which al­so has US op­er­a­tions in In­di­anapo­lis, was found­ed in 2007. It has an­oth­er amisul­pride-based drug — APD403 — in mid-stage de­vel­op­ment for chemother­a­py in­duced nau­sea & vom­it­ing.

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.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has lit­tle love for Big Phar­ma, but there’s at least one new drug that just hit the mar­ket which he is en­am­ored with.

Trump, ev­i­dent­ly, has been read­ing up on J&J’s new an­ti-de­pres­sion drug, Spra­va­to. And the pres­i­dent — who of­ten likes to break out in­to a full-throat­ed at­tack on greedy drug­mak­ers — ap­par­ent­ly en­thused about the ther­a­py in a meet­ing with of­fi­cials of Vet­er­ans Af­fairs, which has long grap­pled with de­pres­sion among vet­er­ans.

Roche’s lat­est an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate has crossed the FDA fin­ish line, gain­ing an ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval a full two months ahead of sched­ule.

Po­livy, or po­latuzum­ab ve­dotin, is a first-in-class drug tar­get­ing CD79b — a pro­tein promi­nent in B-cell non-Hodgkin lym­phoma. It will now be mar­ket­ed for dif­fuse large B-cell lym­phoma as part of a reg­i­men that al­so in­cludes the chemother­a­py ben­damus­tine and a ver­sion of rit­ux­imab (Rit­ux­an).

Af­ter hint­ing it was ex­plor­ing the le­gal­i­ty of the FDA’s ap­proval of a ri­val drug from fam­i­ly-run com­pa­ny Ja­cobus Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Cat­a­lyst Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals on Wednes­day filed a law­suit against the health reg­u­la­tor — ef­fec­tive­ly ac­cus­ing the agency of bow­ing to po­lit­i­cal pres­sure sur­round­ing sky­rock­et­ing drug prices.

Be­fore Cat­a­lyst’s Fir­dapse (which car­ries an av­er­age an­nu­al list price of $375,000) was sanc­tioned for use in Lam­bert-Eaton myas­thenic syn­drome (LEMS) by the FDA, hun­dreds of pa­tients had been able to ac­cess a sim­i­lar drug from com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies for a frac­tion of the cost, or Ja­cobus’ for free, as part of an FDA-rat­i­fied com­pas­sion­ate use pro­gram. But the ap­proval of the Cat­a­lyst drug — ac­com­pa­nied by mar­ket ex­clu­siv­i­ty span­ning sev­en years — ef­fec­tive­ly pre­clud­ed Ja­cobus and com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies from sell­ing their ver­sions.

In the lat­est up­date on As­traZeneca’s de­lay-prone HQ project, the phar­ma gi­ant re­vealed that the cost of con­struc­tion has swelled to £750 mil­lion ($956 mil­lion) — more than dou­ble the orig­i­nal es­ti­mate in 2013.

The move-in date is still in 2020, a spokesper­son con­firmed, af­ter As­traZeneca pushed pro­ject­ed com­ple­tion from 2016 to 2017, and then to the spring of 2019. While the ini­tial plan called for a £330 mil­lion (then $500 mil­lion) in­vest­ment, the cost bal­looned to £500 mil­lion ($650 mil­lion), and more in the most re­cent up­date.

In­vokana sales may be mut­ed, but the di­a­betes drug is set to get some love af­ter its mak­er J&J un­veiled da­ta at the Amer­i­can Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing on Tues­day sug­gest­ing the med­i­cine can con­fer a car­dio­vas­cu­lar ben­e­fit in pa­tients who do not have pre­ex­ist­ing CV dis­ease.

Back in April, J&J had re­port­ed that in the late-stage CRE­DENCE study, the SGLT2 drug scored a 30% re­duc­tion in the risk of a com­pos­ite of ail­ments: a pro­gres­sion to the dou­bling of serum cre­a­ti­nine, end-stage kid­ney dis­ease and re­nal or car­dio­vas­cu­lar death. In terms of sec­ondary end­points, the drug was al­so found be heart-pro­tec­tive: low­er­ing the risk of CV death and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion for heart fail­ure by 31%, as well as ma­jor ad­verse CV events by 20%. In March, the com­pa­ny sub­mit­ted an ap­pli­ca­tion to ex­pand In­vokana’s la­bel to re­flect its im­pact on chron­ic kid­ney dis­ease.

These aren’t the typ­i­cal slides you’d see at End­points — no mol­e­cules, clin­i­cal pro­grams, or p-val­ues. In­stead, we’ll talk dig­i­tal and in­ter­net trends, fac­tors that elite glob­al brands — re­gard­less of in­dus­try — must first mea­sure and un­der­stand be­fore de­ploy­ing prod­ucts in­to the world. That’s a con­cept that most of our Big Phar­ma au­di­ence is in tune with. Dig­i­tal aware­ness is key to suc­cess in the dis­cov­ery, de­vel­op­ment, and mar­ket­ing of new bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and most of the ma­jors now have a chief dig­i­tal of­fi­cer: No­var­tis, Sanofi, and Pfiz­er, just to name a few.