Fa­tal sep­sis at­tacks blight Acor­da’s PhI­II, trig­ger­ing new safe­ty mea­sures and tor­pe­do­ing shares

Af­ter track­ing 7 cas­es of sep­sis — with 5 deaths — in stud­ies of its late-stage Parkin­son’s drug tozadenant, Acor­da is in­creas­ing pa­tient sur­veil­lance while paus­ing en­roll­ment in its long-term safe­ty stud­ies to get a han­dle on the is­sue.

Acor­da’s shares plunged 40% on the news.

The safe­ty is­sue arose af­ter re­searchers be­came aware of the cas­es of agran­u­lo­cy­to­sis, wip­ing out the white blood cells need­ed to fight off an in­fec­tion. Now they say they will check those cell counts on a week­ly ba­sis as they study the po­ten­tial drug prob­lem with the FDA and the mon­i­tor­ing com­mit­tee.

Endpoints News

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.