Cy­to­Dyn tries to squeeze pos­i­tive news out of a failed Covid-19 study — and shares take a beat­ing

Cy­to­Dyn re­al­ly, re­al­ly want­ed to put its best foot for­ward.

So much so that, af­ter sit­ting on un­blind­ed Phase IIb/III da­ta on leron­limab in Covid-19 for two weeks pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry dis­cus­sions, the biotech is­sued six press re­leas­es over the week­end, each of­fer­ing a lit­tle more in­for­ma­tion or re­fin­ing what was pre­vi­ous­ly dis­closed.

In one of them, Cy­to­Dyn ac­knowl­edged that leron­limab — an an­ti-CCR5 an­ti­body that had al­ready been turned away at the FDA’s doorsteps once — had failed the pri­ma­ry end­point of low­er­ing all-cause mor­tal­i­ty at Day 28, as the re­sult was not sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. At best, ex­ecs im­plied, they would need to col­lect fur­ther clin­i­cal da­ta to be ready for reg­u­la­to­ry re­views.

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