Acer Therapeutics Inc. and its collaboration partner, RELIEF THERAPEUTICS Holding SA announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for review Acer's resubmitted New Drug Application (NDA) for ACER-001 (sodium phenylbutyrate) for oral suspension for the treatment of patients with urea cycle disorders (UCDs). The FDA designated the NDA as a Class 2 resubmission and set a Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) target action date of January 15, 2023. In June 2022, as previously announced, the FDA issued Acer a Complete Response Letter (CRL) stating that satisfactory inspection of Acer's third-party contract packaging manufacturer is required before the ACER-001 NDA may be approved.

Acer notified the FDA in the NDA resubmission that the third-party contract packaging manufacturer is ready for inspection. The FDA did not cite any other approvability issues in the CRL pertaining to the NDA, nor request any additional clinical or pharmacokinetic studies be conducted prior to FDA action. Additional existing nonclinical information as requested by the FDA in the CRL but identified as “not an approvability issue”, as well as labeling and other required updates to the original NDA, were provided in the resubmission of the NDA.

There can be no assurance that ACER-001 will be approved for any indication.