In­flaRx shares shat­tered as lead drug flops bad­ly in a PhI­Ib tri­al while Chemo­Cen­tryx is caught in the smash up

Af­ter win­ning over some of the an­a­lysts — and a big chunk of in­vestors — to its side, In­flaRx saw its shares $IFRX get cre­mat­ed Wednes­day morn­ing af­ter their lead drug failed a crit­i­cal Phase IIb study.

IFX-1, which the biotech had billed as first-in-class an­ti-hu­man com­ple­ment fac­tor C5a mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body for pa­tients suf­fer­ing from mod­er­ate to se­vere Hidradeni­tis Sup­pu­ra­ti­va, failed to beat out a sug­ar pill in treat­ing the chron­ic in­flam­ma­to­ry skin dis­ease.

The place­bo re­sponse ac­tu­al­ly beat out the high and medi­um dos­es of this drug, with on­ly a low dose scor­ing slight­ly high­er — and not near­ly enough to prove sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance.

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