If you're a Neurocrine Biosciences (NASDAQ:NBIX) investor, this is a terrible day. If you're a DOV Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:DOVP) investor, you might feel stuck in a waking nightmare. If you're a Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) investor, you probably just shrug and move on to the next bit of news.

Before Tuesday's open, Neurocrine announced that the Food and Drug Administration had issued approvable letters for the 5 mg and 10 mg versions of Indiplon, the company's promising insomnia drug, but not for the 15 mg extended-release version. This is not a case where the best two out of three wins -- there's some modest market opportunity for the lower doses, but it was the 15 mg dose that was to be the centerpiece to the story.

That's bad news, of course, but it's not completely unheard of -- FDA rejections are an unfortunate part of the biotech/pharmaceutical process. What really fired me up, though, was the wording in the press release -- "the FDA indicated that they did not have an opportunity to review all of the information submitted during the NDA review cycles."

What? Were the FDA folks in a rush to get home to watch American Idol? Were they too busy playing World of Warcraft? Of all the reasons, rationale, and excuses I've heard for rejecting a drug application, "we didn't have time to look at your data" has to score as the worst -- presuming that I'm interpreting this statement correctly. Seriously, even though I don't own any of these shares, this is the sort of thing that angries up the blood and makes me wonder whether the whole FDA should be scrapped and rebuilt.

So, what now?

Well, I don't see Pfizer really wanting to bother launching Indiplon without an extended-release formula. So maybe the best-case scenario is that I'm reading this statement correctly and the FDA simply couldn't review all of the clinical data by the decision's due date -- thereby raising the possibility that it could be approved later. Although that's not good news, since it gives competitors time to dig in, it's better than nothing for Neurocrine and DOV, which originally licensed the drug to Neurocrine after in-licensing it from Wyeth (NYSE:WYE) a while ago.

Setbacks aren't always terminal -- as Elan (NYSE:ELN) and Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) hope to soon experience -- though they are difficult. My gut instinct is to tell the investors in the biotechs to hang on, but I can't and won't pretend that this is going to be easy. I'm a longtime fan of Neurocrine, though, so my hope is that this all ends up working out for the company and its investors.

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Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).