Ac­tive Biotech shares crater af­ter Teva's MS drug laquin­i­mod flops (again); FDA ap­proves Foun­da­tion Med­i­cine's ge­nom­ic tu­mor di­ag­nos­tic test

→ We al­ready knew from a Phase III read­out last spring that Te­va’s big mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis drug hope laquin­i­mod didn’t work in treat­ing re­laps­ing re­mit­ting MS. This morn­ing we find out that it’s no bet­ter in the pri­ma­ry pro­gres­sive form of the dis­ease. Te­va’s part­ner Ac­tive Biotech re­port­ed that the Phase II in PPMS — dubbed ARPEG­GIO — flunked the pri­ma­ry on brain at­ro­phy as well as a sec­ondary on time to con­firmed dis­abil­i­ty pro­gres­sion. Ac­tive’s shares $AC­TI cratered on the news, drop­ping more than 40%. Te­va has spent years in pur­suit of a laquiniq­mod ap­proval, de­spite mount­ing ev­i­dence that it couldn’t com­pete. Re­cent­ly the strug­gling out­fit launched a re­struc­tur­ing that led to the de­par­ture of R&D chief Michael Hay­den.

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