Barry Greene, Sage CEO

Sage's sec­ond chance at de­pres­sion hits the PhI­II pri­ma­ry, but ques­tions re­main over dura­bil­i­ty, side ef­fects

Look­ing to make a come­back af­ter a big Phase III flop, Sage Ther­a­peu­tics re­vealed da­ta they be­lieve could change the en­tire de­pres­sion treat­ment land­scape, giv­en the vast ar­ray of fail­ures in the field. But some re­sults are spook­ing in­vestors, send­ing Sage $SAGE shares down ear­ly Tues­day.

First, the pri­ma­ry: Sage and Bio­gen re­port­ed Phase III da­ta for once-dai­ly zu­ra­nolone Tues­day morn­ing, say­ing the ex­per­i­men­tal drug hit its pri­ma­ry end­point by spurring a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant change from base­line in the 17-item Hamil­ton Rat­ing Scale for De­pres­sion to­tal score. Af­ter 15 days, pa­tients in the drug arm saw an av­er­age change of -14.1 points, com­pared to -12.3 on place­bo.

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