Phase II
Galectin’s shares tanked in premarket trading Friday after the biotech revealed its lead asset missed the primary endpoint for its Phase IIb/III trial for patients with a type of liver cirrhosis.
The report comes just two days after Novartis announced its own Parkinson’s drug failure.
Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ investigational non-opioid analgesic suzetrigine failed to outperform placebo. Investors voiced their concerns as the company’s share price fell 13% in premarket trading.
Some 90% of investigational drugs fail—and success rates are even more dire in the neuro space. Here, BioSpace looks at five clinical trial flops that stole headlines over the past 12 months.
Incyte is abandoning its ALK2 blocker zilurgisertib, which it was trialing for myelofibrosis-associated anemia, while iTeos will deprioritize the development of inupadenant after it failed to meet the biotech’s clinical bar in a Phase II study of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer.
The discontinuation caps off a turbulent development path for izokibep, which in September 2023 produced disappointing results from Phase IIb/III study in hidradenitis suppurativa that was found to have had dosing errors.
BNT327, now in early-phase trials, is part of a class of drugs that could one day challenge Keytruda’s dominance. BioNTech obtained the candidate when it bought Biotheus last month in an acquisition deal that could reach up to $950 million.
Anito-cel has shown no signs of delayed neurotoxicity at around 9 months of follow-up, hinting at a safety profile that could set it apart from J&J and Legend’s Carvykti.
Analysts called the data “very competitive” but raised questions about safety. Merck gained ownership of the ADC when it acquired VelosBio in November 2020 for $2.75 billion.
The discontinuation of STRIDES is a rare stumble for the next-generation obesity field and comes just weeks after Amgen announced underwhelming mid-stage data for MariTide.
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