Toronto-based Transition Therapeutics ($TTHI) has endured a pretty torrid few years of Big Pharma partnership setbacks and late-stage trial failure, all of which have seen the company’s shares tank--and now Nasdaq is warning it will be delisted by the winter if it can’t get its share price above $1.00.
The U.S. stock exchange provider has told Transition, which focuses on CNS and metabolic diseases, that by the end of November it must get its penny stock above $1.00 a share for at least 10 consecutive days--or face being booted off Nasdaq, and the high-end investment opportunities it brings.
Under Nasdaq rules, any company trading under its listing cannot see the bid price of its common shares for the previous 30 consecutive trading days close below the minimum $1.00 per share--yet this is exactly what has happened with Transition. As of yesterday, it was trading at 78 cents a share and for more than a month has not been higher than 87 cents a share.
The slide in fortunes for the biotech began just over a year ago, when pharma giant Eli Lilly ($LLY) walked away from the Phase III-ready program for its diabetes drug TT401--a deal initially set up 6 years before.
This was compounded by data posted in 2014 for a Phase II/III study of its lead therapy--ELND005, designed to address agitation in Alzheimer’s patients--that showed it had failed to hit its primary endpoint.
Transition later highlighted subsequent analysis indicating the drug’s activity in patient subsets, but the drug has been in limbo since the news.
ELND005 had been developed alongside Elan until Perrigo ($PRGO) bought that company and handed the drug back to Transition. The candidate is also being tested in Down syndrome.
A number of companies have had similar warnings this year, including Cambridge, MA-based biotech Eleven Biotherapeutics ($EBIO) in March and Raleigh, NC-based kidney disease biotech NephroGenex ($NRX) in April--which has since filed for bankruptcy. Its stock is now just 12 cents a share, while Eleven Bio was trading yesterday at $1.78 a share.
- check out the release
Related Article:
Eli Lilly spurns a PhIII-ready diabetes drug, and Transition tanks (again)