Aptinyx shares crater as lead drug fails in PhII neu­ro­path­ic pain study

Aptinyx’s ap­proach to mod­u­lat­ing the NM­DA re­cep­tor to treat dis­or­ders of the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem has hit a sig­nif­i­cant snag, as its lead ex­per­i­men­tal drug failed a mid-stage study in pa­tients with di­a­bet­ic pe­riph­er­al neu­ropa­thy (DPN), oblit­er­at­ing the re­cent­ly pub­lic com­pa­ny’s stock on Wednes­day.

The drug — dubbed NYX-2925 — was de­vel­oped by the Evanston, IL-based biotech that went pub­lic last Ju­ly bank­ing on its ap­proach to mod­u­late NM­DA re­cep­tors, which are cru­cial to brain and ner­vous sys­tem func­tion. The Phase II tri­al pit­ted three oral dos­es of the drug (10 mg, 50 mg, or 200 mg) ver­sus a place­bo in 300 pa­tients over four weeks. The ex­per­i­men­tal treat­ment failed to con­fer a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in av­er­age dai­ly pain — as mea­sured by a Nu­mer­i­cal Rat­ing Scale (NRS) — at week four, miss­ing the pri­ma­ry end­point of the study.

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