Just weeks af­ter Astel­las agreed to pay Aquinox Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $25 mil­lion up­front for Asian rights to their lead drug rosip­tor, the lit­tle biotech says their Phase III tri­al was a com­plete dis­as­ter, leav­ing noth­ing to sal­vage.

David Main

CEO David Main didn’t sug­ar­coat it. No mat­ter how hard they stud­ied the da­ta, the in­ter­sti­tial cys­ti­tis drug clear­ly couldn’t beat a place­bo. He said:

We have con­duct­ed a num­ber of sen­si­tiv­i­ty, sub­pop­u­la­tion, and sec­ondary end­point analy­ses and none demon­strate a ben­e­fit of rosip­tor over place­bo.

In­vestors bet­ting on a key suc­cess here clear­ly weren’t hap­py. Aquinox’s shares $AQXP were swift­ly dec­i­mat­ed, div­ing 85%.

The Van­cou­ver-based biotech had hoped for bet­ter, re­cruit­ing 433 pa­tients suf­fer­ing from in­ter­sti­tial cys­ti­tis/blad­der pain syn­drome for the study, which had the same de­sign as Phase II.

Af­ter bury­ing the drug pro­gram, and watch­ing its mar­ket cap shriv­el, Main says it’s time to study what kind of strate­gic al­ter­na­tives re­mains open. There is a mid-stage study un­der­way for the same drug — a small mol­e­cule ac­ti­va­tor of SHIP1 — in chron­ic pro­sta­ti­tis/chron­ic pelvic pain syn­drome. But vir­tu­al­ly all of its eggs were in the one drug bas­ket.

Bridge­Bio Phar­ma and Adap­tive Biotech­nolo­gies have not just up­sized IPO of­fer­ings — the pair of uni­corns have al­so raised their of­fer­ing prices above the range, haul­ing in a com­bined $648.5 mil­lion.

Neil Ku­mar’s Bridge­Bio Phar­ma, found­ed in 2015, has a sta­ble of com­pa­nies fo­cused on dis­eases that are dri­ven by de­fects in a sin­gle gene — en­com­pass­ing der­ma­tol­ogy, car­di­ol­o­gy, neu­rol­o­gy, en­docrinol­o­gy, re­nal dis­ease, and oph­thal­mol­o­gy — and can­cers with clear ge­net­ic dri­vers. The start­up mill birthed a pletho­ra of firms such as Ei­dos, Navire, QED Ther­a­peu­tics and Pelle­Pharm, which func­tion as its sub­sidiaries.

We’ve been wait­ing for the ar­rival of Bridge­Bio’s IPO to top off the wave of new biotech of­fer­ings sweep­ing through Nas­daq at the end of H1. And now we learn that it’s been sub­stan­tial­ly up­sized.

Ini­tial­ly pen­ciled in at a uni­corn-sized $225 mil­lion, the KKR-backed biotech has spiked that to the neigh­bor­hood of $300 mil­lion, look­ing to sell 20 mil­lion shares at $14 to $16 each. That’s an added 5 mil­lion shares, re­ports Re­nais­sance Cap­i­tal, which fig­ures the pro­posed mar­ket val­u­a­tion for Neil Ku­mar’s com­pa­ny at $1.8 bil­lion.

A fed­er­al judge has put a gener­ic chal­lenge to No­var­tis’ block­buster mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis drug Gilenya on hold while a patent fight plays out in court.

Judge Leonard P. Stark is­sued a tem­po­rary in­junc­tion ear­li­er this week, forc­ing My­lan, Dr. Red­dy’s Lab­o­ra­to­ries and Au­robindo Phar­ma to shelve their launch plans to al­low the patent fight to pro­ceed. He ruled that al­low­ing the gener­ics in­to the mar­ket now would per­ma­nent­ly slash the price for No­var­tis, even if it pre­vails. 

Known in the in­dus­try as the Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO, Novotech is now lead CRO ser­vices provider for the grow­ing num­ber of in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs se­lect­ing the re­gion for their stud­ies.

Re­flect­ing this Asia-Pa­cif­ic growth, Novotech staff num­bers are up 20% since De­cem­ber 2018 to 600 in-house clin­i­cal re­search peo­ple across a full range of ser­vices, across the re­gion.

Novotech’s ca­pa­bil­i­ties have been rec­og­nized by an­a­lysts like Frost & Sul­li­van, most re­cent­ly with the pres­ti­gious Asia-Pa­cif­ic CRO Biotech of the year award for best prac­tices in clin­i­cal re­search for biotechs for the fifth year. See oth­er awards here.

Ac­er Ther­a­peu­tics’ bid to re­pur­pose celipro­lol — a be­ta-block­er on the mar­ket for hy­per­ten­sion — as a treat­ment for a rare, in­her­it­ed con­nec­tive tis­sue dis­or­der has hit a se­vere set­back. The New­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny on Tues­day said the FDA re­ject­ed the drug and has asked for an­oth­er clin­i­cal tri­al.

The com­pa­ny’s shares $AC­ER cratered near­ly 77% to $4.47 in Tues­day morn­ing trad­ing.