Mu­ta­tions in a gene called MECP2 were iden­ti­fied as the cause of Rett Syn­drome in 1999 in­side a lab­o­ra­to­ry at the Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine — the same year, Ital­ian drug de­vel­op­er Newron Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals was born. On Mon­day, the com­pa­ny’s ex­per­i­men­tal drug, sari­zotan, failed a Phase II/III study in pa­tients with the se­vere neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal dis­or­der that has no ap­proved ther­a­pies.

In-li­censed from Mer­ck KGaA, the com­pound is de­signed to mod­u­late the ac­tiv­i­ty of neu­ro­trans­mit­ters and was aban­doned by the Ger­man drug­mak­er in 2006 af­ter a pair of failed piv­otal stud­ies in Parkin­son’s dis­ease. Now, Newron is al­so ter­mi­nat­ing its de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gram in Rett syn­drome.

The tri­al test­ed two dos­es of sari­zotan (10 mg and 20 mg) against a place­bo in 129 pa­tients with the dis­ease that al­most ex­clu­sive­ly af­fects fe­males, and is char­ac­ter­ized by a loss of ac­quired fine and gross mo­tor skills as well as neu­ro­log­i­cal, cog­ni­tive and au­to­nom­ic dys­func­tion, which leads to loss of abil­i­ty to con­duct dai­ly life ac­tiv­i­ties, walk or com­mu­ni­cate.

The main goal of the study — to in­duce a re­duc­tion in episodes of ap­nea dur­ing wak­ing time com­pared with place­bo — was not met, nei­ther were any sec­ondary goals. De­tailed da­ta will be pre­sent­ed at a lat­er date, Newron said.

Ravi Anand, Newron

“The re­sults of this well de­signed and ex­e­cut­ed study, based on high­ly promis­ing da­ta from a ge­net­ic mod­el of Rett syn­drome in mice, in­di­cate the dif­fi­cul­ties in­her­ent in trans­lat­ing ef­fects in an­i­mal mod­els to hu­man clin­i­cal stud­ies,” the com­pa­ny’s CMO Ravi Anand said in a state­ment.

The com­pa­ny’s shares cratered more than 68% on the Swiss stock ex­change to CHF 1.98.

“This high-risk pro­gramme was a key fo­cus for the stock, with sari­zotan un­der­pin­ning c.70% of our CHF40/share PT (price tar­get),” Jef­feries an­a­lysts wrote in a note.

New York biotech Anavex is an­oth­er com­pa­ny eval­u­at­ing its lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug, blar­came­sine, in pa­tients with Rett Syn­drome — in Feb­ru­ary, the FDA grant­ed the drug fast track sta­tus for the in­di­ca­tion. Aca­dia Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, the mak­er of the Parkin­son’s dis­ease drug Nu­plazid, has an ex­per­i­men­tal Rett syn­drome drug in late-stage de­vel­op­ment. GW Phar­ma, the first-ever com­pa­ny to get a nat­ur­al cannabis-de­rived ther­a­py ap­proved by the FDA, al­so has a CBD drug-in-de­vel­op­ment for Rett, while the cat tran­quil­iz­er ke­t­a­mine is al­so be­ing eval­u­at­ed by an aca­d­e­m­ic group for the con­di­tion.

Newron, mean­while, is now left with two eggs in its bas­ket. It gets roy­al­ty in­come from its Parkin­son’s dis­ease drug, Xada­go, which is sold by its part­ners in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. The oth­er drug in the com­pa­ny’s pipeline, eve­namide, is be­ing de­vel­oped for schiz­o­phre­nia, al­though Covid-19 has de­layed late-stage en­abling tri­als.

Tadataka Yamada, a towering physician-scientist who made his name in academia before transforming drug development at GlaxoSmithKline and developing vaccines for malaria and meningitis at the Gates Foundation, died unexpectedly of natural causes at his home in Seattle Wednesday morning.

He was 76. Frazier Healthcare Partners’ David Socks confirmed his death.

Known widely by the mononym “Tachi,” Yamada had a globetrotting career and arrived in industry relatively late in life. A 2004 Independent article noted GSK had asked Yamada to stay on beyond his approaching 60th birthday, the company’s usual retirement age. Yamada would continue working for the next 17 years, steering the Gates Foundation’s global health division for 6 years, funding Jim Wilson’s gene therapy work when few would touch it, launching Takeda Vaccines and co-founding a series of high-profile biotechs.

When a drugmaker raises the price of a drug in the US by more than 2,000% overnight, and without any particular reason for that increase, nothing typically happens to the company. No fines, no court orders, just business as usual.

Martin Shkreli’s decades-old anti-parasitic drug Daraprim was the perfect example — massive price spike on an old drug, lots of media attention, public outcry, congressional committees dragging his former company through multiple hearings, and at the end of it? Nothing happened to the price or the company (until generic competition came).

Before Valneva garnered the favor of the UK government as a potential supplier of Covid-19 vaccines, the French biotech prided itself on being the first company to bring a chikungunya vaccine into Phase III.

It now has positive pivotal results to back up the breakthrough therapy designation the FDA granted just weeks ago.

There are currently no approved jabs to prevent chikungunya virus infection despite decades of R&D efforts, a fact that underscores just how arduous traditional vaccine development can be, particularly for neglected tropical disease. In a absence of a major commercial market, the US government and NGOs such as CEPI have deployed various grants and incentives to spur on a small crew of academics and industry players, with Merck, via its acquisition of Themis, claiming a spot in that race.

As the US struggles to keep pace with the fast-spreading Delta variant, big companies like Walmart and Disney are imposing vaccine mandates for some workers. It may come as no surprise that Pfizer — the Big Pharma behind the US’ first authorized Covid-19 vaccine — is joining them.

Pfizer will start requiring all US employees and contractors to get vaccinated, or participate in weekly Covid-19 testing, spokesperson Pamela Eisele told Reuters. Workers outside the US are strongly urged to get a vaccine if they can, according to the report. And those with medical conditions or religious objections can seek accommodations.

When Aardvark Therapeutics CEO Tien Lee started his work on the biotech’s lead candidate, appetite suppression was the goal for the small molecule.  Soon after, his team started to see added benefits with lower blood glucose levels and anti-inflammatory activity. On the tail end of that, the company has emerged from stealth mode and announced today that they’ve raised enough cash in the B round to cover mid-stage development work.

As former synbio unicorn Zymergen picks up the pieces from its spectacular implosion Tuesday, an outstanding loan from Perceptive Advisors — the only blue-chip biotech crossover investor to touch Zymergen’s fundraising efforts — could make the situation worse, according to public documents.

In December 2019, more than a year before Zymergen filed for what would eventually become a $500 million IPO, the “biofacturing” firm signed a $100 million credit facility with Perceptive to help supplement the nearly $700 million the company had raised across four VC rounds.