Are­na takes a big step down the come­back trail with PhII suc­cess, shares rock­et up

A year af­ter new Are­na $AR­NA CEO Amit Mun­shi be­gan a painful makeover in­volv­ing deep staff cuts and a deal to even­tu­al­ly of­fload its rights to a dis­ap­point­ing weight drug, the com­pa­ny is mak­ing the case that it’s on track with a new drug for pul­monary ar­te­r­i­al hy­per­ten­sion.

Af­ter the mar­ket closed on Mon­day, Are­na said its PAH drug ra­linepag scored on a key end­point in a Phase II study of the dis­ease, send­ing its shares rock­et­ing up more than 40%. Com­par­ing the drug against a place­bo, in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­port­ed a suc­cess on pul­monary vas­cu­lar re­sis­tance. Their con­clu­sion:

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