Fresh en­thu­si­asm for Cere­cor sours as lead drug flops in PhII de­pres­sion study, shares crater

A few weeks ago, in­vestors em­braced shares of Cere­cor in the big surge that swept up Alk­er­mes’ stock fol­low­ing its clin­i­cal suc­cess for an an­ti-de­pres­sion drug that bore some strik­ing re­sem­blances to one of the mi­cro­cap’s ex­per­i­men­tal de­pres­sion treat­ments, CERC-501, in-li­censed for a small up­front from Eli Lil­ly.

But that com­fort­ing com­par­i­son gave way to a dis­ap­point­ing re­al­i­ty Tues­day evening as Cere­cor re­port­ed that its lead de­pres­sion drug in the pipeline — CERC-301 — flopped in a mid-stage study.

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