Cambridge-based Vericel Corp. ($VCEL) has seen its shares plunge back down to earth today after previously unreleased details of its key cell therapy study showed the trial's ostensible success was not as promising as investors had first hoped. The company had been riding on a high for the past month as shares spiked to their highest levels in more than two years, coming after it posted positive Phase II results for its experimental treatment ixmyelocel-T. But the newly disclosed data shows that, while it met the primary endpoint of reducing the total number of deaths and other outcomes in patients with advanced ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy, the trial in fact failed to meet some secondary goals, such as a measure of the duration of time to the first event, the size of the left ventricle cavity and the distance a patient could walk within 6 minutes. In all those measurements, the difference between patients who received the therapy and those on placebo was not statistically significant. Vericel's stock dropped by about a third on the news. Story
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