AstraZeneca Shares Slide After Heart Drug Trial Misses Primary Endpoint
AstraZeneca's (AZN.L, AZN.ST) shares fell sharply on Thursday morning after the British drugmaker disclosed that a late-stage clinical trial for its heart disease drug candidate Wainua failed to meet its main goals.The Cardio-TTRansform phase 3 trial to evaluate Wainua, or eplontersen, as a potential additional treatment for patients being treated for transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy did not meet the primary efficacy endpoint of reducing deaths and recurrent heart-related emergencies over 140 weeks, compared with placebo.The company's shares were down 9% in early trading in both London and Stockholm.A prespecified subgroup analysis, however, showed nominally significant results in patients receiving Wainua as monotherapy, while no treatment effect was seen in patients already on stabilizers at baseline.AstraZeneca is developing Wainua in partnership with US biotechnology company Ionis. The partners plan to analyze the full data to further understand the results, which they will share at the European Society of Cardiology Congress scheduled for August."Although the trial did not meet its primary objective, we believe the results support greater scientific understanding of treatment approaches for the hundreds of thousands of patients worldwide suffering from this progressive and often fatal condition," said Sharon Barr, executive vice president of AstraZeneca's biopharmaceuticals R&D.Transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy is a systemic and fatal heart disease that can be inherited or develop with age. An estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people worldwide live with the condition, which makes it harder for the heart to pump blood throughout the body, AstraZeneca said.
