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.

Almost all of the drug industry’s biggest advertisers cut their spending on Twitter to zero or near-zero over the last two weeks amid worries about impersonation of their brands by pranksters and the future of the social media company.

Among 18 of the biggest pharmaceutical advertisers in the US market, 12 cut their Twitter ad spending to nothing for the week beginning Nov. 14, according to Pathmatics, which tracks data on prescription drug ad spending as well as general corporate advertising. The list of drugmakers cutting spending to zero includes Merck, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Pfizer and others.

MIT scientists have developed a tool that they say can insert large gene sequences where they want in the genome.

In a paper published Thursday in Nature Biotechnology, MIT fellows Omar Abudayyeh, Jonathan Gootenberg and colleagues detail a technology they call PASTE, which they say can potentially be used to insert long strands of DNA and treat genetic diseases caused by many different mutations, such as cystic fibrosis and Leber congenital amaurosis, a rare eye disorder that causes blindness.

A day before Thanksgiving, J&J’s Janssen has a new cut of Phase III Spravato data to be grateful for.

The pharma giant announced on Wednesday that its nasal spray, also known as esketamine, beat extended-release quetiapine, previously sold by AstraZeneca as Seroquel XR, in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Of 676 adults, a significantly higher number of patients on Spravato were able to achieve remission and avoid relapse after 32 weeks, according to J&J.