An­oth­er day, an­oth­er de­lay. On Mon­day, Roche re­vealed that in ad­di­tion to the US Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion, the UK’s Com­pe­ti­tion and Mar­kets Au­thor­i­ty is prob­ing the Spark Ther­a­peu­tics takeover deal, trig­ger­ing an­oth­er de­lay of the $4.3 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion an­nounced in Feb­ru­ary.

Spark share­hold­ers now have un­til Ju­ly 31 to ten­der their shares.

Since its last up­date in mid-May, the per­cent­age of shares al­ready sold inched up to 21.1% from 21%, low­er than 26.1% and 29.4% reg­is­tered on pre­vi­ous dead­lines. These num­bers are still a far cry from the 50% re­quired to con­sum­mate the deal, but Roche has main­tained it’s not un­usu­al for “a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of share­hold­ers” to wait un­til the last days of the of­fer pe­ri­od.

“We think this is ap­pro­pri­ate dili­gence by FTC but there is un­like­ly any ma­jor is­sue and the deal will close smooth­ly,” Jef­feries an­a­lysts wrote in a note, not­ing that he­mo­phil­ia mar­ket is crowd­ed and that the way a gene ther­a­py is en­gi­neered to work is a stark con­trast to Roche’s ex­ist­ing Hem­li­bra he­mo­phil­ia drug.

“If any­thing, the reg­u­la­tors should see the nu­mer­ous com­peti­tors as pos­i­tive for the mar­ket dy­nam­ics where­by price could po­ten­tial­ly come way down over time and all the play­ers will have to bat­tle for pa­tients (sim­i­lar to Hep C mar­ket in that re­spect)…For these fun­da­men­tal im­por­tant rea­sons, we don’t see how this will be an an­ti-com­pet­i­tive merg­er and un­der­stand the reg­u­la­tors are think­ing about it in the long-term,” they wrote.

Roche’s orig­i­nal dead­line for the deal clos­ing was set for the first half of 2019. “(I)t is un­like­ly that the trans­ac­tion will close dur­ing the first half of 2019. The par­ties ex­pect the trans­ac­tion to close in 2019,” a Roche spokesper­son tells End­points News.

Mean­while the UK’s CMA has al­so opened an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the pro­posed takeover to de­ter­mine whether the deal could hurt com­pe­ti­tion in the UK. Pend­ing the out­come of its in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the CMA has is­sued an in­ter­im en­force­ment or­der  which pre­cludes Roche from in­te­grat­ing Spark in­to the com­pa­ny, and stip­u­lates the two main­tain and op­er­ate the two busi­ness­es sep­a­rate­ly — for now. Both firms are co­op­er­at­ing with the CMA, they said on Mon­day.

“The is­suance of an IEO does not of it­self mean that the CMA has sub­stan­tive con­cerns about the ac­qui­si­tion nor that the CMA has the le­gal pow­er to in­ter­vene to im­pose con­di­tions to the ac­qui­si­tion pro­ceed­ing,” the spokesper­son added.

Spark’s in­vestors ex­pressed their frus­tra­tion with the lat­est de­lay, as the com­pa­ny’s shares $ONCE tum­bled about 9% to $99.80 in ear­ly morn­ing trad­ing.

In a Feb­ru­ary Q&A doc­u­ment in­tend­ed to pla­cate em­ploy­ees, Spark sug­gest­ed that Roche in­tend­ed to al­low the Philadel­phia-based com­pa­ny to op­er­ate as an au­tonomous gene ther­a­py spe­cial­ist, while pour­ing in the re­sources to build a whole unit around it.

Im­age: Spark CEO Jef­frey Mar­raz­zo at an End­points News break­fast pan­el at the 2019 JP Mor­gan con­fer­ence in San Fran­cis­co – pho­to by Jeff Ru­mans for End­points News

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

Fresh off the high of its Nas­daq IPO de­but, and the low of com­par­isons to Cymabay — whose NASH drug re­cent­ly stum­bled — Gen­fit on Mon­day un­veiled an up to $228 mil­lion deal with transpa­cif­ic biotech Terns Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals to de­vel­op its flag­ship ex­per­i­men­tal liv­er drug — elafi­bra­nor — in Greater Chi­na.

The deal comes more than a week af­ter Gen­fit $GN­FT is­sued a fiery de­fense of its dual PPAR ag­o­nist elafi­bra­nor, when com­peti­tor Cymabay’s PPARδ ag­o­nist, se­ladel­par, fiz­zled in a snap­shot of da­ta from an on­go­ing mid-stage tri­al. The main goal at the end of 12 weeks was for se­ladel­par to in­duce a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in liv­er fat con­tent, but da­ta showed that pa­tients on the place­bo ac­tu­al­ly per­formed bet­ter.

The NASH par­ty is over at No­var­tis-backed Cona­tus. And this time they’re turn­ing off the lights.

More than 2 years af­ter No­var­tis sur­prised the biotech in­vest­ment com­mu­ni­ty with its $50 mil­lion up­front and promise of R&D sup­port to part­ner with the lit­tle biotech on NASH — ig­nit­ing a light­ning strike for the share price — Cona­tus $CNAT is back with the lat­est bit­ter tale to tell about em­ri­c­as­an, which once in­spired con­fi­dence at the phar­ma gi­ant.

Ear­li­er in the week we learned that Sanofi was bring­ing out the bud­get ax to trim 466 R&D jobs in Eu­rope, re­tool­ing its ap­proach to car­dio as re­search chief John Reed beefed up their work in can­cer and gene ther­a­pies. And we’re end­ing the week with news that the phar­ma gi­ant has al­so been qui­et­ly re­duc­ing staff in the US, tar­get­ing hun­dreds of jobs as the com­pa­ny push­es vol­un­tary buy­outs with a fo­cus on R&D sup­port ser­vices.

→ Alex­ion $ALXN has scored a speedy re­view for Ul­tomiris for pa­tients with atyp­i­cal he­molyt­ic ure­mic syn­drome (aHUS) af­ter post­ing pos­i­tive da­ta from a piv­otal study in Jan­u­ary. The drug is the rare dis­ease com­pa­ny’s shot at pro­tect­ing its block­buster blood dis­or­der fran­chise that is cur­rent­ly cen­tered around its flag­ship drug, Soliris, which is a com­ple­ment in­hibitor typ­i­cal­ly ad­min­is­tered every two weeks. Ul­tomiris has a sim­i­lar mech­a­nism of ac­tion but re­quires less-fre­quent dos­ing — every eight weeks. The de­ci­sion date has been set to Oc­to­ber 19. Late last year, Ul­tomiris se­cured ap­proval for noc­tur­nal he­mo­glo­bin­uria (PNH) pa­tients.

A month af­ter roil­ing in­vestors with what skep­tics dis­missed as cher­ry pick­ing of its de­pres­sion da­ta, Min­er­va is back with a clean slate of da­ta from its Phase IIb in­som­nia tri­al.

In a de­tailed up­date, the Waltham, MA-based biotech said sel­torex­ant (MIN-202) hit both the pri­ma­ry and sev­er­al sec­ondary end­points, ef­fec­tive­ly im­prov­ing sleep in­duc­tion and pro­long­ing sleep du­ra­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors made a point to note that the ef­fects were con­sis­tent across the adult and el­der­ly pop­u­la­tions, with the lat­ter more prone to the sleep dis­or­der.

Shares of Krys­tal Biotech took off this morn­ing $KRYS af­ter the lit­tle biotech re­port­ed promis­ing re­sults from its gene ther­a­py to treat a rare skin dis­ease called epi­der­mol­y­sis bul­losa.

Fo­cus­ing on an up­date with 4 new pa­tients, re­searchers spot­light­ed the suc­cess of KB103 in clos­ing some stub­born wounds. Krys­tal says that of 4 re­cur­ring and 2 chron­ic skin wounds treat­ed with the gene ther­a­py, the KB103 group saw the clo­sure of 5. The 6th — a chron­ic wound, de­fined as a wound that had re­mained open for more than 12 weeks — was par­tial­ly closed. That brings the to­tal so far to 8 treat­ed wounds, with 7 clo­sures.

Three months af­ter reg­u­la­tors at the FDA forced Ab­b­Vie to halt en­rolling pa­tients in its tri­als of a com­bi­na­tion us­ing Ven­clex­ta (vene­to­clax) to treat drug-re­sis­tant cas­es of mul­ti­ple myelo­ma, the agency has green-light­ed the re­sump­tion of one of those stud­ies, while keep­ing the rest on the side­lines.

The CANO­VA (M13-494) study can now get back in busi­ness re­cruit­ing pa­tients to test the drug for a pop­u­la­tion that shares a par­tic­u­lar ge­net­ic bio­mark­er. To get that per­mis­sion, Ab­b­Vie — which is part­nered with Roche on this pro­gram — was forced to re­vise the pro­to­col, mak­ing un­spec­i­fied changes in­volv­ing risk mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures, pro­to­col-spec­i­fied guide­lines and an up­dat­ed fu­til­i­ty cri­te­ria.