Rare diseases
Some biotechs that had seen regulatory setbacks under Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research director Vinay Prasad experienced stock bumps Monday morning. Under Prasad’s leadership, the rare disease space has suffered a series of controversial rejections.
Servier will pick up Ojemda, which received FDA approval in 2024 to treat pediatric glioma. The drug clocked sales of $155 million for Day One Biopharmaceuticals in 2025.
UniQure does not have to drill placebo burr holes in the skulls of patients with Huntington’s disease, an unnamed FDA senior official said on Thursday. Instead, the company would anesthetize them and put “one to three nicks” in their scalp.
In this episode of Denatured, you’ll listen to Ram May-Ron, managing partner at FreeMind Group, and Ravi Kiron, managing director at Biopharma Strategy Advisors. We’ll be speaking about how to combine nondilutive funding and family office money into a unified strategy that gets companies through the drug development valley of death.
UniQure and REGENXBIO are both dealing with FDA setbacks for their respective gene therapies, as regulatory experts question the FDA’s decision-making processes; CBER director Vinay Prasad is under probe for allegedly fostering a toxic workplace; Sarepta CEO Doug Ingram is stepping down after several years of tumult at the top of the muscular dystrophy–focused company; and Eli Lilly again tops Novo Nordisk in a weight loss trial.
While an anonymous source tied the closure to shortcomings in the FDA’s new pathway, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services pushed back on the suggestion.
With fresh billions unlocked in the 2026 U.S. budget and mission‑driven family offices recalibrating after a “nuclear winter,” early stage biotechs are rewriting their financing strategies around nondilutive capital and targeted private wealth.
In a complete response letter published by the FDA on Monday, the agency said a resubmission for REGENXBIO’s Hunter syndrome gene therapy should provide evidence of normalized or improved biomarker levels or neurodevelopmental outcomes.
Days after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary appeared to malign uniQure’s AMT-130 in an interview with CNBC, the agency confirmed to the biotech that a sham surgery–controlled study is needed before submitting the gene therapy for approval.
Aardvark Therapeutics is down 54% since Friday after the biotech said it detected “reversible cardiac observations” in a healthy volunteer study of its drug to treat extreme hunger in patients with the rare genetic disease.
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