Public Company Edition: Four health care special purpose acquisition vehicles went public and two others announced mergers, but only one biopharma firm priced an IPO during the week of 19-23 October. Replimune’s $250m offering led recent FOPOs.

Sanofi failed in its attempt to have its EU marketing authorization application for avalglucosidase alfa fast-tracked through the centralized review process at the European Medicines Agency. This and other developments relating to the agency's accelerated assessment mechanism are logged in this latest update to the Pink Sheet's EU accelerated assessment tracker.

AMAG’s decision to fight US FDA’s decision to pull the preterm birth product seems unlikely to result in victory, but Makena will get to stay on the market during the appeal process, which is expected to be protracted and will likely include accusations that the agency is being insensitive to affected patients.

CBER’s Peter Marks says agency assesses the importance of durability of effect differently for a gene therapy that treats a disease that has no other available therapies versus a condition for which there are multiple approved treatments. Marks’ comments shed more light on the complete response letter for BioMarin’s hemophilia gene therapy Roctavian.