Bel­lus says its Mer­ck cough ri­val passed a PhI­Ib test af­ter ear­li­er flop, but in­vestors can't make up their minds

A lit­tle over a year af­ter flop­ping out of the chron­ic cough game and leav­ing Mer­ck as the sole play­er, Bel­lus Health is say­ing it’s back in con­tention.

The Cana­di­an biotech tout­ed a Phase IIb in­ter­im analy­sis Mon­day morn­ing it de­scribed as pos­i­tive, say­ing that “at least one dose” of its ex­per­i­men­tal chron­ic cough drug post­ed a clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful re­duc­tion in place­bo-ad­just­ed 24-hour cough fre­quen­cy af­ter four weeks. It’s a re­sult that comes rough­ly 15 months af­ter an­oth­er Phase II tri­al re­port­ed a miss on all four dos­es, send­ing shares $BLU down more than 75% at the time.

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