BELLUS Health (NASDAQ:BLU) craters 79% premarket on robust volume in reaction to unsuccessful results from a Phase 2 clinical trial, RELIEF, evaluating escalating doses of lead candidate BLU-5937 in patients with refractory chronic cough.
The study failed to achieve the primary endpoint of a statistically significant reduction from baseline in awake coughs per hour at eight time points at the four doses tested.
In a subgroup of participants experiencing high cough counts (at least 32.4 coughs per hour on average), all four doses tested did produce statistically significant reductions in cough frequency (-28% to -32%).
On the safety front, BLU-5937 was well-tolerated with no serious treatment-related adverse events reported. The most common adverse events were taste alteration and partial taste loss.
Management hosted a conference call this morning at 8:00 am ET to discuss the results.
Small molecule BLU-5937 is a orally available antagonist of the P2X3 receptor, a validated target for chronic cough. The company previously claimed that preclinical tests showed that BLU-5937 significantly reduced cough with no taste loss, an unwanted side effect associated with Merck’s (NYSE:MRK) P2X3 antagonist gefapixant.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.