De­vel­op­ment part­ners at MEI, Helsinn dump a high-risk PhI­II AML study af­ter con­clud­ing it would fail sur­vival goal

Four years af­ter Switzer­land’s Helsinn put $25 mil­lion of cash on the ta­ble for an up­front and near-term mile­stone to take MEI Phar­ma’s drug pra­ci­no­s­tat in­to a long-run­ning Phase III tri­al for acute myeloid leukemia, the part­ners are walk­ing away from a clin­i­cal pile­up.

The drug — an HDAC in­hibitor — failed to pass muster dur­ing a fu­til­i­ty analy­sis, as re­searchers con­clud­ed that pra­ci­no­s­tat com­bined with azac­i­ti­dine wasn’t go­ing to out­per­form the con­trol group in the piv­otal.

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