Biotech takes a Christ­mas beat­ing af­ter safe­ty fears force re­searchers to halt all hep B stud­ies

There’s no place to run, no place to hide when a crit­i­cal fail­ure oc­curs. That in­cludes Christ­mas break.

Spring Bank Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $SBPH took a beat­ing Thurs­day morn­ing af­ter an­nounc­ing that in­ves­ti­ga­tors had spot­ted safe­ty prob­lems with their Phase IIb study for their he­pati­tis B ther­a­py, ina­ri­givir so­prox­il 400mg. They’re stop­ping dos­ing for all tri­als af­ter not­ing that 3 pa­tients ex­pe­ri­enced “he­pa­to­cel­lu­lar dys­func­tion and an el­e­va­tion of ala­nine transam­i­nase (ALT) po­ten­tial­ly con­sis­tent with liv­er in­jury rather than im­mune flares.”

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