After three years of late-stage testing, the Medicines Company halted two studies of its anti-clotting drug cangrelor after an independent monitoring board said that the therapy was not meeting its goals. And that news sent the company's stock into a nosedive, with shares plunging 44 percent.
Researchers indicated that the drug was not proving more effective than the standard therapy Plavix and did not appear equally or more effective in combination with standard meds than standard treatments alone.
"The trials are being discontinued; we plan to finalize data collection and analyses, and we expect that the data will be presented at a major cardiology meeting in due course," said Clive Meanwell, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of The Medicines Company. "We will now move forward more quickly with our studies where cangrelor is tested to enable safe 'bridging' of patients undergoing surgery."
- check out the Medicines Co. release