Zo­genix shares are claw­ing back some of the val­ue they lost 2 months ago af­ter the FDA hit the biotech with a refuse-to-file no­tice on their ex­per­i­men­tal ther­a­py for Dravet syn­drome. 

Com­pa­ny ex­ecs said this morn­ing that they worked out reg­u­la­tors’  is­sues with the ap­pli­ca­tion for Fin­tepla, which cen­tered on a pair of big prob­lems: the ab­sence of non-clin­i­cal stud­ies need­ed to al­low as­sess­ment of the chron­ic ad­min­is­tra­tion of fen­flu­ramine and the in­clu­sion of an in­cor­rect ver­sion of a clin­i­cal dataset. Now they plan to re­sub­mit in Q3 af­ter get­ting off the hook on both scores — which trig­gered a sigh of re­lief among in­vestors.

Zo­genix stock climbed 27% be­fore the open­ing bell Thurs­day on hopes of a near-term sec­ond turn at bat. The biotech not­ed:

Based on the fi­nal meet­ing min­utes re­ceived, the FDA has agreed to Zo­genix’s plan to re­sub­mit the NDA for Fin­tepla with­out the in­clu­sion of the new chron­ic tox­i­c­i­ty stud­ies re­quest­ed in the RTF let­ter. With re­gards to the sec­ond is­sue, the com­pa­ny con­duct­ed and dis­cussed with the FDA a root cause analy­sis to ex­plain the in­cor­rect clin­i­cal dataset sub­mit­ted in the orig­i­nal NDA, and the FDA is in agree­ment with the com­pa­ny’s plan for re­sub­mis­sion of the datasets in the NDA.

This time around, though, Zo­genix’s team will not have the ben­e­fit of a break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion to boast about. With 2 drugs on the mar­ket, the FDA no longer felt that their drug qual­i­fied. But the com­pa­ny is still hold­ing out hopes for a pri­or­i­ty re­view.

So­cial im­age: Shut­ter­stock

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.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) drug maker Vertex Pharmaceuticals — which is still locked in negotiation with NHS England to endorse the use of its medicines — has successfully negotiated a deal with Scottish authorities.

A month ago, the Scottish Medicines Consortium spurned two of the company’s medicines — Orkambi and Symkevi — citing uncertainty over their long-term efficacy in relation to their cost.

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.