Eric Shaff (Seres)

Af­ter a 4-year so­journ, strug­gling mi­cro­bio­me pi­o­neer Seres claims a break­out PhI­II come­back. And shares re­spond in fren­zied spike

Al­most ex­act­ly 4 years ago, Seres Ther­a­peu­tics $MCRB ex­pe­ri­enced one of those soul-crunch­ing fail­ures that can raise big ques­tions about a biotech’s fu­ture. Out front in their pur­suit of a gut punch to C. dif­fi­cile in­fec­tion (CDI), the Phase II test was a flat fail­ure, and in­vestors wiped out a bil­lion dol­lars of eq­ui­ty val­ue that nev­er re­turned in the years that fol­lowed.

Seres, though, pressed ahead, chang­ing out CEOs a year ago — bid­ding Mer­ck vet Roger Pomer­antz farewell from the C suite — and push­ing through a Phase III, hop­ing that amp­ing up the dosage would make the key dif­fer­ence. And this morn­ing, they un­veiled a claim that they had aced the Phase III and po­si­tioned them­selves for a run at a land­mark FDA OK.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.