Slowly rising from the ashes of an unexpected negative FDA decision on lead drug indiplon last year, Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ:NBIX) continued its movement forward with the release of its second-quarter financial results yesterday and an update on the progress of its pipeline drug candidates.

The big positive for Neurocrine this quarter was the resubmission of the indiplon marketing application. The guidance for when the agency will be able to complete its class two review of Neurocrine's approvable letter response is approximately Dec. 12. If granted full approval, Neurocrine expects another eight-week holdup after that as it awaits Drug Enforcement Agency classification of the drug.

Neurocrine has no plans to fight alone against the heavy sales and marketing budgets of Sepracor (NASDAQ:SEPR), Takeda, and Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE:SNY) if indiplon is approved. On the conference call, management reiterated that it was still actively in discussions with potential marketing partners for the drug. If indiplon gets approved, a partner should be in place before the DEA completes its work.

In the first six months of the year Neurocrine's cash and equivalents were reduced by $35 million. Indiplon is not likely to get Neurocrine to profitability once sales start up, considering the competitiveness of the insomnia drug market and the fact that Neurocrine has a number of early-stage clinical programs starting to ramp up development (this is a good thing).

What revenues from indiplon will do is help Neurocrine reduce its cash burn from these numerous pipeline candidates. Just last week the company in-licensed a preclinical stage potential epileptic and bipolar disease drug and plans to bring the compound into clinical stage testing in early 2008.

For better or worse Neurocrine is still a stock whose near-term future is based on indiplon. With an approvable letter response decision in the coming months, all eyes will remain focused on the drug's fate with the FDA.

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Fool contributor Brian Lawler does not own shares of any company mentioned in this article. The Fool has a disclosure policy.