Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful Phase III study in April show­cas­ing the safe­ty and po­ten­tial of its new sleep drug, Idor­sia post­ed some mixed news in the sec­ond Phase III study, but that won’t stop a planned fil­ing aimed at reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval.

The drug, a dual orex­in re­cep­tor an­tag­o­nist (DO­RA) called dari­dorex­ant, was found to sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove sleep main­te­nance and sub­jec­tive to­tal sleep time in 25 mg dos­es, repli­cat­ing re­sults from the first Phase III study. How­ev­er, im­prove­ments in sleep on­set and day­time func­tion­ing nar­row­ly missed sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance, de­spite nu­mer­i­cal con­sis­ten­cy with the April study.

Idor­sia al­so test­ed 10 mg dos­es of dari­dorex­ant in the study and found pos­i­tive re­sponse across all four ef­fi­ca­cy mea­sures, but all fell short of be­ing sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

The new study mea­sured dari­dorex­ant’s ef­fects in 924 adult and el­der­ly pa­tients. Side ef­fects from the tests re­mained low, as with the first study, with se­ri­ous in­stances re­main­ing bal­anced across dosage amounts and place­bos, ac­cord­ing to the biotech.

Re­sults from the two stud­ies re­gard­ing the 25 mg dos­es and place­bos will now be pooled, and some an­a­lysts ex­pect this will of­fer a promis­ing pro­file to take to reg­u­la­tors. Ques­tions will like­ly re­main, how­ev­er, giv­en the cau­tion that reg­u­la­tors usu­al­ly take when ap­prov­ing in­som­nia treat­ments.

Pe­ter Welford at Jef­feries sees the poor re­sults for the low dose as a good thing, as it re­moves any temp­ta­tion the FDA may have to for­go the high dose and go with the less threat­en­ing low­er dose — as they did with Mer­ck. But its suc­cess is still no sure thing.

Im­por­tant­ly the low­er 10mg dose showed small­er non-sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits, re­mov­ing the risk reg­u­la­tors en­dorse a sub­op­ti­mal dose to err on the side of cau­tion, in our view. Com­mer­cial un­cer­tain­ties re­main.

In­som­nia drugs gen­er­al­ly are slow to be­come avail­able and are dif­fi­cult to pro­duce. The drugs are al­so heav­i­ly reg­u­lat­ed, as the FDA demon­strat­ed when it im­posed black box warn­ings last year on a slew of more com­mon­ly-known drugs like Lunes­ta, Am­bi­en and Sonata.

Where DO­RAs dif­fer from tra­di­tion­al in­som­nia drugs is in the in­hi­bi­tion of orex­in sig­nal­ing. Orex­ins, dis­cov­ered in 1998, are hor­mones pro­duced by the hy­po­thal­a­mus that reg­u­late sleep, arousal and ap­petite.

On­ly two DO­RAs have hit the mar­ket in the US, but they al­so faced up­hill climbs. Mer­ck’s Bel­som­ra (chem­i­cal­ly known as su­vorex­ant), re­leased in 2014, re­quired warn­ing la­bels re­gard­ing next-day resid­ual ef­fects and abuse po­ten­tial, among oth­er safe­ty risks.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ei­sai’s DO­RA Dayvi­go (lem­borex­ant) scored an FDA ap­proval in De­cem­ber and launched last month but al­so need­ed sim­i­lar warn­ings.

Idor­sia spun off of Swiss phar­ma com­pa­ny Acte­lion af­ter a $30 bil­lion ac­qui­si­tion by John­son & John­son in ear­ly 2017. Idor­sia had been Acte­lion’s old re­search and de­vel­op­ment de­part­ment and is head­ed up by Acte­lion’s founder and CEO, Jean-Paul Clozel. Dari­dorex­ant is one of four de­vel­op­men­tal drugs cur­rent­ly in Idor­sia’s pipeline that has reached the Phase III stage.

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.

The first generation of personalized CAR-T therapies made big waves in the treatment of lymphoma for their stunning efficacy. Nkarta is hoping its off-the-shelf natural killer cell approach will stand out on safety — while keeping some of those impressive numbers on responses.

In a new update from its Phase I dose escalation study, the South San Francisco-based biotech reported that seven out of 10 patients treated with the highest doses of its NK cell therapy, NKX019, achieved a complete response, translating to a complete response rate of 70%.

A biotech centered on treating fibrosis — born out of Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital — has received a financial boost.

According to an SEC filing, the company has raised $31,761,186 in its latest funding round, which includes 17 investors. The filing lists six names attached to the company, including Meredith Fisher, a partner at Mass General Brigham Ventures and Mediar’s acting CEO.

We now know why Verve’s lead candidate was placed on hold last month by US regulators.

In an SEC filing, Verve laid out the FDA’s conditions for lifting the hold on its lead therapy, VERVE-101. That includes submitting preclinical data about potency differences in human versus non-human cells, risks of gene editing germline cells, and off-target analyses in non-hepatocyte cell types.

The FDA also wants clinical data from the ongoing Heart-1 trial, and to modify the trial protocol in the US to add additional contraceptive measures and increase the length of a staggering interval between the dosing of participants.