Denmark's Lundbeck reports that its stroke drug Desmoteplase failed to demonstrate a statistically significant improvement compared to placebo in a Phase III trial. The news immediately took a sizeable bite out of the company's stock price. Paion, Lundbeck's partner on the drug, carried out the trial with Forest Laboratories. At one dose, Desmoteplase delivered an improvement in clinical outcome for 47.4 percent of one group and 36.4 percent of the patients receiving a higher dose. But 46 percent of the placebo group experienced a clinical improvement.
"These data are surprising and not consistent with previously observed patterns," said PAION, which is planning to conduct careful analysis of the data to better understand what went wrong.
- check out the data
- read the report on the trial failure from ABCMoney