Back-to-back piv­otal fail­ures force Ther­a­vance to lay off 270 staffers, prune R&D fo­cus

If it all went well, Q3 was sup­posed to be har­vest time for Ther­a­vance.

Both of its lead drugs — the pan-JAK in­hibitor izenci­tinib and blood pres­sure drug am­prelox­e­tine — were slat­ed for cru­cial read­outs. The biotech was, as SVB Leerink an­a­lyst Ge­of­frey Porges put it, “en­ter­ing the most im­por­tant pe­ri­od of val­i­da­tion events in its his­to­ry.”

In­stead, izenci­tinib flopped a key Phase IIb tri­al in ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis, putting the J&J part­ner­ship around it in jeop­ardy. A month lat­er, Ther­a­vance is re­port­ing that the Phase III tri­al test­ing am­prelox­e­tine in symp­to­matic neu­ro­genic or­tho­sta­t­ic hy­poten­sion is al­so a fail­ure, im­plod­ing the com­pa­ny’s en­tire pipeline and forc­ing a re­think on R&D strat­e­gy.

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