Glass half emp­ty: Achao­gen re­ceives split vote from FDA ex­perts on lead an­tibi­ot­ic, shares plunge

An FDA ad­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee has hand­ed down a split vote — yes for one in­di­ca­tion and no for an­oth­er — on Achao­gen’s lead an­tibi­ot­ic, ruf­fling the high ex­pec­ta­tions it set up go­ing in.

In­vestors weren’t hap­py, send­ing Achao­gen stocks down close to 29% in af­ter-hours trad­ing.

The split de­ci­sion car­ries in­ter­est­ing im­pli­ca­tions for oth­er an­tibi­ot­ic mak­ers. In a first, Achao­gen $AKAO sub­mit­ted an NDA with a re­quest to use the Lim­it­ed Pop­u­la­tion An­tibac­te­r­i­al Drug (LPAD) path­way in re­view­ing the drug, pla­zomicin, for the treat­ment of blood­stream in­fec­tions (BSI) due to Car­bapen­em-re­sis­tant En­ter­obac­te­ri­aceae. That hap­pens to be the in­di­ca­tion that the ad­comm vot­ed down; all 15 of them vot­ed yes when it came to treat­ing pa­tients with com­pli­cat­ed uri­nary tract in­fec­tions (cU­TI).

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