A little more than a year after Sanofi handed back rights to Voyager’s $VYGR gene therapy program for Huntington’s in exchange for a cash payment, the biotech says the FDA has placed a hold on the IND needed to get into the clinic.

The word from Voyager — the FDA remains mute in these cases — is that the hold on VY-HTT01 deals with CMC issues, something that typically isn’t the kiss of death for a biotech company. But it will put the brakes on things for an uncertain period of time for Voyager, now helmed by Andre Turenne.

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AstraZeneca’s first consumer ad for Evusheld is also a first for drugs that have been granted emergency use authorizations during the pandemic.

The first DTC ad for a medicine under emergency approval, the Evusheld campaign launching this week aims to raise awareness among immunocompromised patients — and spur more use.

Evusheld nabbed emergency authorization in December, however, despite millions of immunocompromised people looking for a solution and now more widespread availability of the drug.

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The EMA’s human medicines committee on Friday recommended three new drugs for approval or conditional approval, even as their US counterparts have rejected these three for various reasons.

In a major move, CHMP offered a thumbs-up to a conditional marketing authorization for the first gene therapy to treat severe hemophilia A, although the agency cautioned that it’s so far unknown how long the effects of infusion will last.

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Frontera Therapeutics, a China and US biotech, has closed a $160 million Series B and received regulatory clearance to test its first gene therapy stateside, Endpoints News has learned.

Led by the largest shareholder, OrbiMed, the biotech has secured $195 million total since its September 2019 founding, according to an email reviewed by Endpoints. The lead AAV gene therapy program is for an undisclosed rare eye disease, according to the source.

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Sarepta Therapeutics’ next-gen Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug has been hit with a clinical hold after investigators flagged a serious case of low magnesium levels in one patient’s blood.

Screening and dosing will be halted in what is known as Part B of the Phase II MOMENTUM study, which has enrolled about half of the planned patients. Sarepta said it will be submitting information on all cases of the condition, known as hypomagnesemia, per the FDA’s request and proposing some changes to the risk mitigation and safety monitoring plan.

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Although it’s exceedingly rare for the FDA to rescind a breakthrough designation once it’s granted, there has been a recent uptick — as in 2020 and 2021 combined, the agency rescinded 17 BTDs, compared to just 18 rescinded from 2015 to 2019 combined.

Protagonist Therapeutics saw this reality up close and personal in April after a clinical hold lifted on its experimental blood cancer drug, as the company revealed that the FDA sought to revoke the BTD. The decision, Protagonist says, stems from “observed malignancies” related to the hold, initially imposed in September 2021.

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