Cy­tokine storms force Mir­na to shut­ter a tri­al; Ar­tios gath­ers $33M for can­cer drug work

A se­ries of se­vere cas­es of cy­tokine re­lease syn­drome forced Austin, TX-based Mir­na Ther­a­peu­tics to shut down a Phase I study of its lead mi­croR­NA drug, MRX34. Mir­na al­so opt­ed not to start an­oth­er study un­til it can an­a­lyze the sit­u­a­tion. Their shares $MIRN cratered in the news, drop­ping 23%. “We made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to close the study af­ter a fifth, im­mune-re­lat­ed se­ri­ous ad­verse event was re­cent­ly re­port­ed by one of our clin­i­cal sites,” not­ed CEO Paul Lam­mers. “This pa­tient ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere (Grade 4) cy­tokine re­lease syn­drome and is un­der­go­ing treat­ment. We have no­ti­fied the U.S. FDA and the Ko­re­an FDA of our de­ci­sion and are in the process of clos­ing the tri­al.”

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