Bat­tered af­ter a spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure with its Alzheimer’s drug can­di­date, Neu­rotrope Bio­sciences is be­ing ab­sorbed by a pri­vate­ly-held com­pa­ny that makes an erec­tile dys­func­tion (ED) treat­ment.

Sten­dra mak­er Metuchen Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, which was cen­sured by the FDA last year for mak­ing mis­lead­ing claims about its ED ther­a­py, is vault­ing on to the Nas­daq fol­low­ing the all-stock merg­er with Neu­rotrope, un­der a new name: Pet­ros (the Greek word for “rock”).

Pet­ros is set to be a men’s health com­pa­ny, with its flag­ship Sten­dra drug (which gen­er­at­ed rough­ly $30 mil­lion last year) as well as a pipeline that in­cludes a re­cent­ly in-li­censed prod­uct for Pey­ronie’s dis­ease, a non-can­cer­ous con­di­tion that emerges as a re­sult of fi­brous scar tis­sue that caus­es curved, painful erec­tions.

Un­der the deal, which has been ap­proved by both boards and is ex­pect­ed to close in the third quar­ter, Metuchen share­hold­ers (Jug­ger­naut Cap­i­tal Part­ners have the prin­ci­pal stake) will own the ma­jor­i­ty 80% of the com­bined com­pa­ny, while Neu­rotrope stake­hold­ers will have the re­main­der.

Charles Ryan

Once con­sum­mat­ed, Neu­rotrope’s CEO Charles Ryan is set to be­come Pet­ros’ chief and re­launch Sten­dra. Pet­ros will al­so have ac­cess to Neu­rotrope’s rough­ly $20 mil­lion in avail­able cash and cash equiv­a­lents, while Neu­rotrope’s set­back-marred neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion com­pound Bryo­statin-1, as­sets, and li­a­bil­i­ties will be spun out in­to a sep­a­rate­ly-trad­ed com­pa­ny.

Last Sep­tem­ber, the ex­per­i­men­tal drug failed to do bet­ter than the place­bo in a mid-stage study in­volv­ing mod­er­ate-to-se­vere Alzheimer’s pa­tients. In fact, the drug arm did a lit­tle worse than a sug­ar pill in the key study, mark­ing yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of fail­ure in the ar­du­ous field of Alzheimer’s drug de­vel­op­ment. The com­pa­ny’s shares $NTRP cratered as a re­sult, hit­ting a low of $1.

How­ev­er, in Jan­u­ary, the com­pa­ny said a posthoc analy­sis of the study sug­gest­ed the drug could be res­ur­rect­ed for use in Alzheimer’s and un­veiled a $2.7 mil­lion grant from the NIH to take the pro­gram for­ward. The move de­light­ed, caus­ing the stock to more than dou­ble.

It’s time for a new FDA commissioner to come on board, a rite of passage for Joe Biden’s administration that should help seal the new president’s rep on seeking out the experts to lead the government over the next 4 years.

As of now, the competition for the top job appears to have narrowed down to 2 people: The longtime CDER chief Janet Woodcock and Joshua Sharfstein, the former principal deputy at the FDA under Peggy Hamburg. Both were appointed by Barack Obama.

With the contract manufacturing market on a hot streak with the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, Lonza has opened its war chest in recent months for a suite of expansions. But now, with its focus elsewhere, the company is looking to contract its capsule offerings for pharma.

The CDMO giant will offload its lipid capsule production sites in Ploërmel, France, and Edinburgh, UK, as part of a plan to exit the pharmaceutical capsules space while maintaining its market foothold in consumer health and nutrition, the company said Tuesday.

Agios vet John Evans has demonstrated how to raise big money for a little biotech.

The Beam Therapeutics CEO — and ARCH partner — has pieced together a $260 million private placement from a group of backers that includes Perceptive Advisors, Farallon Capital, Casdin Capital, Redmile Group and Cormorant Asset Management. And there are 3 main goals they’ll pursue with it: clinical development, strategic partnerships and general corporate purposes.

AstraZeneca’s big gamble on Daiichi Sankyo’s antibody-drug conjugate Enhertu has already paid off with a big approval in breast cancer more than a year ago. But the partners have big plans for their blockbuster in the making, and a new nod in gastric cancer will raise their spirits even higher.

The FDA on Friday approved Enhertu to treat locally advanced or metastatic HER2-positive gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma in patients who have previously undergone at least one round of treatment with a Herceptin-based regimen, AstraZeneca said in a release.