14-year-old par­tial hold comes back to haunt Gem­phire, bat­ter­ing shares and wreck­ing time­lines

A 14-year-old par­tial clin­i­cal hold on Gem­phire’s lead — and on­ly — drug just came back to bite the biotech to­day, and the stock mar­ket re­ac­tion quick­ly carved out half of its mar­ket cap in sav­age ret­ri­bu­tion.

Fre­quent­ly over­looked in the roller coast­er ride in­vestors have had since the biotech went pub­lic two years ago, with plans to ad­vance the old Pfiz­er drug for NASH and car­dio pur­pos­es, the FDA clamped a par­tial clin­i­cal hold on the drug in 2004, pre­vent­ing any stud­ies us­ing the drug in pa­tients for more than 6 months be­cause reg­u­la­tors de­ter­mined that the ther­a­py had po­ten­tial tox­i­c­i­ty is­sues linked with the PPAR drug class.

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