The C-suite at Paci­ra like­ly sighed in re­lief on Wednes­day, as their main ri­val, Heron Ther­a­peu­tics, was hand­ed an un­ex­pect­ed FDA re­jec­tion — re­lat­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing con­cerns — for a com­pet­ing long-act­ing non-opi­oid painkiller for post-sur­gi­cal anal­ge­sia.

The health reg­u­la­tor has asked for ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to Heron’s chem­istry, man­u­fac­tur­ing and con­trols and oth­er non-clin­i­cal da­ta — and has not iden­ti­fied any safe­ty or ef­fi­ca­cy is­sues, nor asked for ex­tra clin­i­cal stud­ies and da­ta analy­ses for the drug, HTX-011, Heron said.

Paci­ra in­vestors cheered the an­nounce­ment, lift­ing the com­pa­ny’s stock $PCRX more than 16% to $46.25 be­fore the bell. Mean­while, Heron shares $HRTX tum­bled more than 26% to $16.01 pre­mar­ket.

Heron plans to li­aise with the FDA to re­solve their con­cerns, and re­sub­mit its mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion as soon as pos­si­ble, chief Bar­ry Quart said in a state­ment.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing is­sues are like­ly solv­able, Cowen an­a­lysts wrote in a note, pre­dict­ing a new FDA de­ci­sion date in first half of next year.

As the US health reg­u­la­tor per­sists in its ef­fort to stem the tide of opi­oid abuse, over­dose and ad­dic­tion while the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ar­chi­tects of the pre­scrip­tion painkiller cri­sis face fierce scruti­ny, Heron Ther­a­peu­tics had de­signed the drug to take a bite out of the mar­ket that en­com­pass­es mil­lions of post­op­er­a­tive pa­tients who are can­di­dates for opi­oids. HTX-011 has shown in stud­ies to sub­due the need for opi­ates.

Heron is ini­tial­ly tar­get­ing rough­ly 13.5 mil­lion pa­tients who have un­der­gone the most painful pro­ce­dures (typ­i­cal­ly gen­er­al surgery, OB/GYN and plas­tic surgery). Many of these pa­tients are first giv­en a lo­cal anes­thet­ic like bupi­va­caine to dull the pain, but the ef­fects on­ly last about six hours or so, there­fore doc­tors tend to pre­scribe opi­oids to man­age se­vere pain that can last up to three days (de­pend­ing on the surgery).

HTX-011 is de­signed to slow­ly re­lease its two in­gre­di­ents: bupi­va­caine and the non-steroidal an­ti-in­flam­ma­to­ry drug (NSAID) meloxi­cam over a three-day pe­ri­od.

Bar­ry Quart

When you cut through tis­sue, and some­times bone, in­flam­ma­to­ry cy­tokines are re­leased. Apart from the in­flam­ma­tion that aris­es in re­sponse, these cy­tokines change the lo­cal PH of the in­ci­sion, mak­ing it more acidic (lo­cal anes­thet­ics tend to lose their po­ten­cy in acidic en­vi­ron­ments), and en­hance the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of nerve end­ings so even low lev­els of pain pro­duce a larg­er pain trans­mis­sion to the brain, Quart ex­plained in an in­ter­view with End­points News ahead of the FDA de­ci­sion.

“Adding a small amount of the NSAID meloxi­cam in­to our poly­mer for­mu­la­tion and re­leas­ing that si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly over three days al­lowed us to block enough of that in­flam­ma­to­ry process,” Quart said. “We can show clear pain re­duc­tion for the full three days that the drug (HTX-011) is be­ing re­leased. It’s the first time — that we know of — that an ex­tend­ed-re­lease lo­cal anes­thet­ic of any kind re­gard­less of how its de­liv­ered has been able to beat bupi­va­caine so­lu­tion as stan­dard-of-care in large Phase III tri­als.”

Com­bin­ing HTX-011 with two over-the-counter oral anal­gesics (ac­eta­minophen and ibupro­fen) has yield­ed im­pres­sive re­sults in help­ing post-op pain pa­tients re­main opi­oid free in two stud­ies pub­lished by Heron this year.

In a 63-pa­tient study, 90% of pa­tients re­ceiv­ing HTX-011 with the OTC anal­gesic reg­i­men did not re­quire opi­oids to man­age their post­op­er­a­tive pain through 72 hours post her­nia surgery, com­pared to 51%, 40% and 22% of pa­tients re­ceiv­ing HTX-011, bupi­va­caine and a place­bo, Heron re­vealed in Jan­u­ary. Fol­low up af­ter 28 days showed 81% of pa­tients re­mained opi­oid-free.

Biren Amin

“We con­sid­er these re­sults as com­pelling, and sup­port­ing a best-in-class pro­file in post-op pain based on sig­nif­i­cant­ly more opi­oid-free pa­tients and sub­stan­tial­ly low­er opi­oid use. HTX-011 could of­fer the on­ly op­tion of opi­oid-free pre­scrip­tion at dis­charge, which re­mains a high pri­or­i­ty in the bat­tle against opi­oid abuse,” Jef­feries’ Biren Amin wrote in a note that month.

Apart from bupi­va­caine, HTX-011 will com­pete with Paci­ra Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ J&J-part­nered, long-act­ing post-op painkiller Ex­par­el, which gen­er­at­ed net sales of about $331 mil­lion last year. Ex­par­el’s main in­gre­di­ent is al­so bupi­va­caine and the drug has been ap­proved by the US reg­u­la­tor since Oc­to­ber 2011 as a treat­ment for post­sur­gi­cal anal­ge­sia.

In a note pub­lished in March, SVB Leerink an­a­lysts wrote that while “Ex­par­el does a good job re­duc­ing opi­oid use for post-op pain; HTX-011 could do this bet­ter,” cit­ing a KOL sur­vey. “…it (Ex­par­el) has done a good job in re­duc­ing opi­oid use and hos­pi­tal­iza­tion time in its post-op­er­a­tive pa­tients, the du­ra­tion of ef­fi­ca­cy is in the 24-36 hour range. As such, this KOL be­lieves the longer po­ten­tial du­ra­tion of ef­fi­ca­cy and the in­stil­la­tion method of HTX-011 will re­sult in ini­tial use of the prod­uct. But up­on avail­abil­i­ty of both prod­ucts, this KOL be­lieves hos­pi­tals will run their own pi­lot stud­ies in var­i­ous sur­gi­cal mod­els to see how they com­pare to one an­oth­er.”

Over half the pa­tients Heron is tar­get­ing are re­ceiv­ing bupi­va­caine, and about 4% are get­ting Ex­par­el — the rest are get­ting var­i­ous “caines” such as li­do­caine, Quart said. “While we ob­vi­ous­ly ex­pect to take a cer­tain part of Ex­par­el mar­ket share…our pri­ma­ry tar­get is the 96% of pa­tients who are re­ceiv­ing…short-act­ing lo­cal anaes­thet­ics.”

Paci­ra, which un­veiled plans to swal­low a com­pa­ny that makes a sys­tem that us­es in­tense­ly cold ther­a­py on a spe­cif­ic nerve to re­lieve pain to com­ple­ment its flag­ship Ex­par­el treat­ment and for­ti­fy its pain fran­chise in March, is set to re­port is first-quar­ter re­sults on Thurs­day.

Year-on-year Ex­par­el rev­enue growth for 2019 is es­ti­mat­ed at 23%, Jef­feries an­a­lysts pre­dict­ed in a note last week. “(D)es­pite the strong re­cent (Ex­par­el) re­sults…cur­rent pen­e­tra­tion rates re­main very low…and the mar­ket is cer­tain­ly large enough to ac­com­mo­date two or more play­ers. In fact, we think the ad­di­tion­al voice of an­oth­er mar­ket­ing team rais­ing aware­ness for non-opi­oid post-sur­gi­cal pain op­tions ar­guably helps all mar­ket par­tic­i­pants. And per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, we view the sit­u­a­tion as less like ‘Coke vs Pep­si’ and more to the point that if un­bundling and ac­cess con­tin­ue to im­prove, all com­peti­tors in the seg­ment ben­e­fit.”

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.