A win in Rett syn­drome? Not so fast — biotech shares slide amid con­cerns of last-minute tri­al changes

Nor­mal­ly, an an­nounce­ment that a Phase III tri­al met all pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary ef­fi­ca­cy and safe­ty end­points is sure to get a biotech’s shares up.

But Anavex found it­self in an op­po­site sit­u­a­tion Tues­day af­ter de­clar­ing suc­cess in its Rett syn­drome study, when ob­servers point­ed out that the New York-based biotech changed its end­points just ahead of the read­out.

Shares $AVXL fell 15.60% to $11.04, but rose again in pre-mar­ket trad­ing to $11.75 as Anavex CEO Christo­pher Missling framed the cri­tiques as an “in­ac­cu­rate im­pres­sion.”

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