While gene ther­a­py com­pa­nies re­joice as the sec­tor gains trac­tion with ap­provals and a flur­ry of M&A ac­tiv­i­ty, one play­er is feel­ing the heat.

Back in 2015, Voy­ager Ther­a­peu­tics joined forces with Sanofi Gen­zyme in a deal worth up to $845 mil­lion ($100 mil­lion up­front + a po­ten­tial $745 mil­lion in mile­stones) to co-de­vel­op gene ther­a­pies for se­vere cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem dis­or­ders. But two years lat­er, the French drug­mak­er re­treat­ed, elect­ing to not pick up the op­tion to work on Voy­ager’s Parkin­son’s dis­ease pro­gram. (Last year, the FDA dis­ap­point­ed Voy­ager, telling the com­pa­ny that it was not open to an ac­cel­er­at­ed fil­ing on the Parkin­son’s drug on the ba­sis of Phase II da­ta — in­stead re­quir­ing an ad­di­tion­al piv­otal study.)

Sanofi Gen­zyme’s re­treat now re­sem­bles a de­ser­tion.

On Mon­day, Voy­ager $VY­GR said Sanofi Gen­zyme is walk­ing away from op­tions to ac­quire US co-com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights and ex-US de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion rights to ex­per­i­men­tal Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease drug VY-HTT01 and to Friedre­ich’s atax­ia pro­gram VY-FXN01; and a fu­ture Voy­ager CNS or­phan pro­gram. In ad­di­tion, Voy­ager and Sanofi Gen­zyme’s al­liance on SMA has al­so been ter­mi­nat­ed —  the in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights of the pro­gram are be­ing re­turned/ex­clu­sive­ly li­censed to Sanofi Gen­zyme.

Con­se­quent­ly, Voy­ager has agreed to give $10 mil­lion up­front to Sanofi Gen­zyme, and an ad­di­tion­al $10 mil­lion mile­stone pay­ment up­on the po­ten­tial fil­ing of an ap­pli­ca­tion to test in hu­mans the Hunt­ing­ton’s dis­ease drug, VY-HTT01 or, cer­tain back­up com­pounds, as well as po­ten­tial roy­al­ties. In ad­di­tion, Voy­ager is al­so of­fer­ing Sanofi Gen­zyme ex­clu­sive dibs to se­lect AAV cap­sids from its ar­se­nal of drugs in de­vel­op­ment in up to two non-CNS in­di­ca­tions.

Re­cent­ly, Voy­ager has been busy shop­ping for oth­er part­ners. It has inked deals with Ab­b­Vie and Neu­ro­crine this year.

On Mon­day, Voy­ager trans­ferred the ex-US rights to the Sanofi-aban­doned Friedre­ich’s atax­ia pro­gram to Neu­ro­crine. The com­pa­ny al­so sig­naled that it plans to part­ner out its ALS gene ther­a­py, VY-SOD102, (and no longer plans to file an IND for it this year), to fo­cus its re­sources on Hunt­ing­ton’s.

“While it is un­clear ex­act­ly who might be look­ing to in-li­cense this pro­gram, Bio­gen might serve as an in­ter­est­ing can­di­date giv­en their ex­ist­ing work on SOD1 with their an­ti­sense oligonu­cleotide (ASO), tofersen, and close prox­im­i­ty giv­en both com­pa­nies are based in Cam­bridge. How­ev­er, if Bio­gen were to do this deal it might al­so be an ear­ly sig­nal to in­vestors that they view gene ther­a­py as strong al­ter­na­tive to their ASO port­fo­lio, po­ten­tial­ly ac­cept­ing that Zol­gens­ma is go­ing to be a strong com­peti­tor in SMA,” Baird’s Bri­an Sko­r­ney wrote in a note.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

It’s official. Memorial Sloan Kettering has picked a brain cancer expert as its new physician-in-chief and CMO, replacing José Baselga, who left under a cloud after being singled out by The New York Times and ProPublica for failing to properly air his lucrative industry ties.

His replacement, who now will be in charge of MSK’s cutting-edge research work as well as the cancer care delivered by hundreds of practitioners, is Lisa M. DeAngelis. DeAngelis had been chair of the neurology department and co-founder of MSK’s brain tumor center and was moved in to the acting CMO role in the wake of Baselga’s departure.

More than two years ago Ritter Pharmaceuticals managed to find enough silver lining in its Phase IIb/III study — after missing the top-line mark — to propel its lactose intolerance toward a confirmatory trial. But as it turned out, the enthusiasm only set the biotech and its investors up to be sorely disappointed.

This time around there’s little left to salvage. Not only did RP-G28 fail to beat placebo in reducing lactose intolerance symptoms, patients in the treatment group actually averaged a smaller improvement. On a composite score measuring symptoms like abdominal pain, cramping, bloating and gas, patients given the drug had a mean reduction of 3.159 while the placebo cohort saw a 3.420 drop on average (one-sided p-value = 0.0106).

An early-stage update on Adverum Biotechnologies’ intravitreal gene therapy has triggered investor concern, after patients with wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD) saw their vision deteriorate, despite signs that the treatment is improving retinal anatomy.

Adverum, on Wednesday, unveiled 24-week data from the OPTIC trial of its experimental therapy, ADVM-022, in six patients who have been administered with one dose of the therapy. On average, patients in the trial had severe disease with an average of 6.2 anti-VEGF injections in the eight months prior to screening and an average annualized injection frequency of 9.3 injections.

Too often, Alex Arfaei arrived too late. 

An analyst at BMO Capital Markets, he’d meet with biotech or pharmaceutical heads for their IPO or secondary funding and his brain, trained on a biology degree and six years at Merck and Endo, would spring with questions: Why this biomarker? Why this design? Why not this endpoint? Not that he could do anything about it. These execs were coming for clinical money; their decisions had been made and finalized long ago.

In the first of what it hopes will be a couple of major regulatory milestones for its new drug, Ardelyx has bagged an FDA approval to market Ibsrela (tenapanor) for irritable bowel syndrome.

The drug’s first application will be for IBS with constipation (IBS-C), inhibiting sodium-hydrogen exchanger NHE3 in the GI tract in such a way as to increase bowel movements and decrease abdominal pain. This comes on the heels of two successful Phase III trials.