→ Kala Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, one of the pletho­ra of biotechs that trace their roots to the pro­lif­ic lab at MIT led by Bob Langer, on Thurs­day dis­closed that its ex­per­i­men­tal drug for short-term dry eye re­lief did not pass muster with the FDA. Last year, the com­pa­ny post­ed mixed da­ta from two stud­ies — STRIDE 1 and STRIDE 2. Kala $KALA is now bank­ing on the on­go­ing STRIDE 3 study to re­verse its for­tunes. It ex­pects STRIDE 3 to read out by the end of the year, and to re­sub­mit its mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion the first half of 2020.

While dis­ap­point­ing, the CRL is not com­plete­ly un­ex­pect­ed, COO Todd Baze­more said. The com­pa­ny had ini­ti­at­ed STRIDE 3 last year at the ad­vice of the FDA, and is con­fi­dent that they have now got­ten the in­clu­sion/ex­clu­sion cri­te­ria right by screen­ing out pa­tients with un­sta­ble symp­toms. Once they have the da­ta, he added, they can re­file an NDA un­der a type 2 sub­mis­sion, which en­tails a 6-month in­stead of 12-month re­view.

Point­ing to No­var­tis‘ re­cent $5.3 bil­lion pur­chase of Shire’s Xi­idra — whose ap­proval process in­spired Kala to take its chances the first time — Baze­more em­pha­sized the po­ten­tial of KPI-121: “There’s so few prod­ucts in this cat­e­go­ry, it’s a huge un­tapped cat­e­go­ry in which on­ly about a mil­lion and a half of the 30 mil­lion pa­tients are cur­rent­ly be­ing treat­ed with a pre­scrip­tion prod­uct.”

→ Em­bat­tled In­sys, en­gulfed in lit­i­ga­tion and fi­nan­cial­ly starved, has found a buy­er for its unit-dose nasal and sub­lin­gual spray man­u­fac­tur­ing equip­ment, as well as two pipeline prod­ucts — nalox­one nasal spray and ep­i­neph­rine nasal spray — in UK-based Hik­ma. “Hik­ma is the largest sup­pli­er of gener­ic nasal sprays in the US and we have been look­ing for ways to build up­on our strong man­u­fac­tur­ing plat­form and ex­pand our prod­uct port­fo­lio,” said Hik­ma’s pres­i­dent of gener­ics Bri­an Hoff­mann in a state­ment.

→ Los An­ge­les biotech BioVie, which in April post­ed pos­i­tive da­ta from a small study test­ing its in­fu­sion ther­a­py for se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tion of ad­vanced liv­er cir­rho­sis, on Thurs­day amend­ed the terms of its im­pend­ing IPO. The com­pa­ny now plans to raise $15 mil­lion by of­fer­ing 1.3 mil­lion shares for $11.44/share, the as-con­vert­ed last close of its shares on the over-the-counter mar­ket. The com­pa­ny, which plans to list un­der the sym­bol BIVI, had pre­vi­ous­ly filed to of­fer 1.3 mil­lion priced at $11.88/share.

One of the many inequalities the pandemic has laid bare is the gender imbalance in biomedical research. A paper examining Covid-19 research authorship wondered out loud: Where are the women?

It’s a question that echoes beyond our current times. In the biopharma world, not only are women under-represented in R&D roles (particularly at higher levels), their achievements and talents could also be undermined by stereotypes and norms of leadership styles. The problem is even more dire for women of color.

A day after Moderna and the NIH published much-anticipated data from their Phase I Covid-19 vaccine trial, attention is turning to AstraZeneca which, according to a UK report, is expected to publish its own early data tomorrow.

ITV’s Robert Peston reported that AstraZeneca will publish the Phase I data in The Lancet. 

AstraZeneca and Moderna represent the two most ambitious Covid-19 vaccine efforts, having set the quickest timelines for approval (though they were recently joined in that regard by the Pfizer-BioNTech partnership) and some of the loftiest goals in total doses. Yet there is even less known about AstraZeneca’s vaccine’s effect on humans than there was about Moderna’s before yesterday. Although, in a controversial move, Moderna released some statistics from its Phase I in May, AstraZeneca has yet to say anything about what it saw in its Phase I trial — a move consistent with the scientific convention to withhold data until it can be published in a peer-reviewed journal.