For Rigel, a sur­pris­ing place­bo re­sponse spurs a PhI­II fail, stock beat­ing. But it's been here be­fore

A Cal­i­for­nia biotech fa­mil­iar with speed bumps ran in­to an­oth­er ear­ly Wednes­day as it tries to push its on­ly ap­proved drug in­to an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion.

Rigel Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals re­port­ed a Phase III fail for its bleed­ing dis­or­der drug fos­ta­ma­tinib, say­ing the pri­ma­ry end­point did not achieve sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance when com­pared to place­bo. The biotech at­tempt­ed to in­duce a durable he­mo­glo­bin re­sponse in pa­tients with warm au­toim­mune he­molyt­ic ane­mia, or wAI­HA, but came up short due to what ex­ecs said were “ge­o­graph­i­cal dif­fer­ences” be­tween the drug and place­bo co­horts.

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