Ru­mors of bad news can flick­er around the BioTwit­ter world in a heart­beat. And the im­pact can be dev­as­tat­ing.

On Tues­day the tar­get was In­tra-Cel­lu­lar Ther­a­pies $IT­CI, and the ru­mor was pegged to an up­date on the FDA’s web­page that not­ed the agency was can­cel­ing the Psy­chophar­ma­co­log­ic Drugs Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee meet­ing for Ju­ly 31 and the re­view planned for the biotech’s schiz­o­phre­nia drug, lu­mate­per­one to­sy­late cap­sules.

For the le­gions of in­vestors look­ing for some­thing, any­thing, on the in­ter­net to bet on with what might be an in­side clue to a cat­a­lyst, it was pure gold. Had reg­u­la­tors al­ready de­cid­ed against the drug? What could it mean? It had to be bad, right?

Dis­as­ter!

The com­pa­ny’s stock was shred­ded, drop­ping more than 30% on the spec­u­la­tion. More than $150 mil­lion in mar­ket cap was gone in a snap as word of the move spread.

Then, af­ter the mar­ket closed, In­tra-Cel­lu­lar tried to staunch the flow of red. The biotech put out a state­ment say­ing that they had sup­plied ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on their drug that the agency want­ed ex­tra time to study — hence the de­ci­sion to strike the ad­comm.

The FDA can­celled the Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee meet­ing to al­low suf­fi­cient time to re­view this new and any forth­com­ing in­for­ma­tion as they con­tin­ue the NDA re­view.  This in­for­ma­tion may re­sult in an ex­ten­sion of the Sep­tem­ber 27, 2019 Pre­scrip­tion Drug User Fee Act (PDU­FA) tar­get ac­tion date for the lu­mate­per­one NDA.

That was good for a 9% re­bound af­ter the bell on Tues­day.

Peter Marks appeared before a virtual SVB Leerink audience yesterday and said that his staff at FDA’s CBER is on the verge of working around the clock. Manufacturing inspections, policy work and sponsor communications have all been pushed down the to-do list so that they can be responsive to Covid-related interactions. And the agency’s objective right now? “To save as many lives as we can,” Marks said, likening the mortality on the current outbreak as equivalent to “a nuclear bomb on a small city.”

In the latest incident where Alex Azar has steadfastly taken the side of President Donald Trump over that of the FDA, the HHS secretary was noncommittal this morning when asked if he supports the attempt by his subordinates at the FDA to strengthen guidelines for a vaccine EUA.

Appearing on NBC’s Today Show, the HHS secretary muddied the waters, stating that the guidance that matters is the one that is “actually already out there.”

Stephen Hahn went before a Senate committee Wednesday and declared he’s fighting. “Every one of the decisions we have reached has been made by career FDA scientists based on science and data, not politics,” he exclaimed, adding that “FDA will not permit any pressure from anyone to change that. I will fight for science.”

A few hours later, he was undermined by President Donald Trump when a reporter asked if he was okay with stricter vaccine guidelines that the FDA was said to be cooking up. “That has to be approved by the White House. We may or may not approve it. That sounds like a political move,” he decided.

Just over a month away from the presidential election, the FDA has issued a final regulation fulfilling President Trump’s promise to let states import certain prescription drugs from Canada.

On Thursday, Trump told a crowd in North Carolina that the new rule goes into effect “today.” But the published regulation states that it won’t take effect for 60 days. And even then, it could be a while before cheaper drugs make it across the border.

It’s another day of hauling cash in the biopharma world as four more IPOs priced Friday and a fifth filed its initial paperwork.

The biggest offering comes from PMV Pharma, an oncology biotech focusing on p53 mutations, which raised $211.8 million after pricing shares at $18 apiece. Prelude Therapeutics, developing PRMT5 inhibitors for rare cancers, was next with a $158 million raise, pricing shares at $19 each. Graybug Vision raised $90 million after pricing at $16 per share for its wet AMD candidates, and breast cancer biotech Greenwich Lifesciences brought up the rear with a small, $7 million raise after pricing shares at $5.75.

Days after J&J dosed the first participants of its Phase III ENSEMBLE trial, the pharma giant has detailed the early-stage data that gave them confidence in a single-dose regimen.

Testing two dose levels either as a single dose or in a two-dose schedule spaced by 56 days in, the scientists from Janssen, the J&J subsidiary developing its vaccine, reported that the low dose induced a similar immune response as the high dose. The interim Phase I/IIa results were posted in a preprint on medRxiv.