Less than a month af­ter pub­lish­ing pos­i­tive long-term da­ta for an ex­per­i­men­tal gene ther­a­py, Or­chard Ther­a­peu­tics has qui­et­ly ter­mi­nat­ed its li­cens­ing agree­ment over the pro­gram.

In an 8-K fil­ing to the SEC last Fri­day, Or­chard re­port­ed that it is end­ing the li­cense re­lat­ed to its OTL-101 can­di­date, in de­vel­op­ment to treat adeno­sine deam­i­nase se­vere com­bined im­mun­od­e­fi­cien­cy or ADA-SCID, known col­lo­qui­al­ly as “bub­ble boy syn­drome.” It’s a rare ge­net­ic dis­ease where pa­tients have al­most no im­mune sys­tem what­so­ev­er.

The move comes af­ter Or­chard pub­lished long-term re­sults in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine show­ing all 50 pa­tients who re­ceived the treat­ment were still alive af­ter at least two years. Event-free sur­vival was al­so high, with 97% of US pa­tients and 95% of UK par­tic­i­pants not need­ing to re­turn to pri­or ther­a­pies.

Or­chard had been de­vel­op­ing the ther­a­py af­ter sign­ing the agree­ment with UCLA and Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don back in Feb­ru­ary 2016. The biotech has an­oth­er ther­a­py for ADA-SCID known as Strimvelis, ap­proved in Eu­rope in 2016, but halt­ed dos­ing af­ter a pa­tient treat­ed un­der com­pas­sion­ate use be­gan see­ing treat­ment for leukemia.

The idea be­hind OTL-101 is to use a lentivirus with hematopoi­et­ic stem cells, ad­min­is­tered ex vi­vo, to in­sert a func­tion­al copy of the ADA gene in­to pa­tients’ cells. Or­chard had been look­ing for an ap­proval for a while, hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly won break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion for OTL-101 from the FDA.

An FDA green­light had elud­ed Or­chard with the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic forc­ing them to push back plans to sub­mit a rolling ap­proval ap­pli­ca­tion. But last week’s SEC re­port may have been in the works for at least a year.

Back in May 2020, Or­chard an­nounced a new op­er­a­tional strat­e­gy in­volv­ing lay­ing off 25% of its staff and re­struc­tur­ing its pipeline to fo­cus less on rare dis­eases. Part of that re­struc­tur­ing, Or­chard said at the time, was to re­duce in­vest­ment in OTL-101 and an­oth­er pro­gram — steer­ing re­sources in­stead to­ward four oth­er can­di­dates clas­si­fied as “top near-term pri­or­i­ties.”

The pro­grams in­volved are be­ing set up to treat: metachro­mat­ic leukody­s­tro­phy (OTL-200), Wiskott-Aldrich syn­drome (OTL-103), Mu­copolysac­cha­ri­do­sis type I (OTL-203) and Mu­copolysac­cha­ri­do­sis type II­IA, al­so known as San­fil­ip­po syn­drome type A (OTL-201).

Or­chard went pub­lic in 2018, rid­ing a $200 mil­lion IPO af­ter two oth­er nine-fig­ure rounds with a $110 mil­lion Se­ries B and $150 mil­lion Se­ries B. The biotech worked with Glax­o­SmithK­line, too, ac­quir­ing the Big Phar­ma’s rare dis­ease unit — in­clud­ing Strimvelis — in ex­change for rough­ly 20% eq­ui­ty, al­so in 2018. The lack of an FDA-ap­proved prod­uct at this stage, how­ev­er, has left an­a­lysts with ques­tions.

So­cial im­age: Bob­by Gas­par, Or­chard Ther­a­peu­tics CEO

Since losing a controversial court case over orphan drug exclusivity last year, the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development has remained entirely silent on orphan exclusivity for any product approved since last November, leaving many sponsors in limbo on what to expect.

That silence means that for more than 70 orphan-designated indications for more than 60 products, OOPD has issued no public determination on the seven-year orphan exclusivity in the Orange Book, and no new listings of orphan exclusivity appear in OOPD’s searchable database, as highlighted recently by George O’Brien, a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington, DC office.