Drug Development
The mid-stage disappointment in Alzheimer’s disease delivers another blow to Neuphoria Therapeutics, which in November last year was forced to launch a strategic business review after a Phase 3 trial in social anxiety disorder failed.
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A recent FDA reversal sparked new hope for patients with Huntington’s disease. Flying under the radar, Skyhawk Therapeutics revealed 12-month functional data from a midstage trial of its own candidate showing improvements on a key disease measurement scale.
Recent approvals for Corcept Therapeutics and Merck have injected momentum into the space, where GSK, Allarity Therapeutics, OSE Immunotherapies and others are advancing their own candidates.
The FDA plans to hold an advisory committee meeting to discuss Capricor Therapeutics’ application for deramiocel, which the agency rejected last July. The news surprised CEO Linda Marbán, who told BioSpace the FDA has not communicated any issues of concern with the company’s resubmitted application.
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Although still in Phase I, Wave Life Sciences’ injectable RNA weight loss treatment achieved results that impressed analysts, with 4% fat reduction after three months, beating Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide at a similar time point.
The 2025 meeting of the American Society of Hematology features some of the newest developments in blood cancers and rare diseases.
Dyne’s exon-skipping therapy zeleciment rostudirsen resulted in an approximately sevenfold increase in dystrophin levels at six months and elicited functional improvements that are the “best ever” for this treatment class, Stifel analysts said.
Analysts at Jefferies see blockbuster potential in zorevunersen in Dravet syndrome, with sales potentially reaching $1 billion to $4 billion.
The R&D pipeline for depression therapies faced a demoralizing 2025 as five high-profile candidates, including KOR antagonists by Johnson & Johnson and Neumora Therapeutics, flunked late-stage clinical trials, underscoring the persistent challenges of CNS drug development.
Innovative outcome measures coupled with a focus on patient-centered clinical differentiation can help the biopharma industry make meaningful progress in the highly complex area of neuroscience.
Praxis Precision Medicines has also announced a “successful” pre-NDA meeting with the FDA for its essential tremor drug candidate ulixacaltamide, for which an approval application is slated for early 2026.
Days after Johnson & Johnson’s posdinemab failed to slow clinical decline in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, Eisai Chief Clinical Officer Lynn Kramer expressed unwavering conviction in his company’s own anti-tau asset, while others suggest the Alzheimer’s field is heading in a completely different direction.
Investor optimism has waned as final minutes from uniQure’s pre-BLA meeting with the FDA convey that data from the company’s Phase I/II studies of AMT-130 are “unlikely” to provide the primary evidence to support a biologics license application.
In this episode of Denatured, Jennifer C. Smith-Parker speaks to Stacey Adam, PhD, Vice President of Science Partnerships at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health and Patrick Smith, Senior Vice President, Translational Science at Certara, to discuss the latest regulatory news and the future for new approach methologies (NAMs) development.