Fre­quen­cy Ther­a­peu­tics re­ports tri­al fail and lays off over half of staff — stock cap­sizes

Fre­quen­cy Ther­a­peu­tics an­nounced Mon­day morn­ing that its lead can­di­date, a drug for hear­ing loss, failed a Phase IIb study. As a re­sult, the Lex­ing­ton, MA-based biotech will dis­con­tin­ue its hear­ing loss pro­gram and lay off 55% of its staff.

And Fre­quen­cy’s stock $FREQ, which was trad­ing at just un­der $4 Fri­day, fell 80% af­ter the open­ing bell to un­der $1 per share.

Fre­quen­cy said its lead drug, FX-322, failed to im­prove speech per­cep­tion com­pared to place­bo af­ter 90 days in a study with 142 peo­ple who have sud­den or noise-in­duced sen­sorineur­al hear­ing loss. The idea be­hind Fre­quen­cy’s pro­grams is to use small mol­e­cules to ac­ti­vate prog­en­i­tor cells — the in-be­tween of stem cells and ma­ture, spe­cial­ized cells — and in­duce them to grow in­to healthy tis­sue.

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