Cy­cla­cel un­veils a flop in leukemia 2 years af­ter a call on fu­til­i­ty, but still won’t give up

Cy­cla­cel Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $CY­CC knew more than two years ago that its Phase III study of sapac­itabine for new­ly di­ag­nosed cas­es of acute myeloid leukemia in the el­der­ly was a bust, un­like­ly to pro­duce pos­i­tive da­ta. But with no sign that the drug was do­ing any harm, in­ves­ti­ga­tors car­ried on treat­ing pa­tients.

And to­day they proved that the da­ta and safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing board that called the study for fu­til­i­ty at the end of 2014 was ab­solute­ly right. The drug flopped against a place­bo, un­able to demon­strate a sig­nif­i­cant over­all sur­vival ben­e­fit. But there was a small sliv­er of sun­shine as the drug did post an “im­prove­ment” in com­plete re­spons­es. And that was enough for the lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor to car­ry on with the da­ta analy­sis and go past the top-line re­sults dis­cussed this morn­ing.

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