Ex­clu­sive: Cen­trex­ion's knee pain drug fails two PhI­II stud­ies, but ex-Pfiz­er CEO Kindler's biotech might still ask for FDA nod

The lead drug at Cen­trex­ion Ther­a­peu­tics — a biotech helmed by for­mer Pfiz­er CEO Jeff Kindler and chaired by Cel­gene co-founder Sol Bar­er — has flunked a Phase III test in os­teoarthri­tis knee pain, End­points News has learned.

Sol Bar­er

A sec­ond Phase III tri­al for the drug al­so failed to meet its pri­ma­ry end­point, the com­pa­ny con­firmed to End­points. Cen­trex­ion nev­er planned to is­sue a press re­lease dis­clos­ing the failed stud­ies, but does plan to “sub­mit the da­ta for pub­li­ca­tion in a peer re­viewed med­ical jour­nal,” ac­cord­ing to an emailed state­ment from a spokesper­son.

The Boston biotech might al­so still pack­age up the drug’s re­sults and send it to the FDA’s doorsteps. Three pa­tients died in the treat­ment arms across the two tri­als.

It’s a blow to the com­pa­ny’s pipeline, as Cen­trex­ion had tout­ed CN­TX-4975’s po­ten­tial for a mar­ket de­but in 2022, with FDA fast track des­ig­na­tion al­ready in hand, when it thought about go­ing pub­lic in 2018. The IPO nev­er hap­pened de­spite an­oth­er eye to­ward Nas­daq in 2019.

The com­pa­ny has not pro­vid­ed an up­date on its pipeline, fi­nanc­ing or gen­er­al sta­tus since dis­clos­ing it raised $40.5 mil­lion in Oc­to­ber 2020. Cen­trex­ion had at­tempt­ed to qui­et­ly leave be­hind the first Phase III flop, with the on­ly dis­clo­sure com­ing in the form of an up­date on the clin­i­cal­tri­als.gov data­base on April 8. A press re­lease has not been is­sued.

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