Daniel de Boer, ProQR CEO (via YouTube)

In lat­est an­ti­sense fail­ure, Pro­QR's rare eye dis­ease treat­ment falls flat

It’s been a bad 12 months for an­ti­sense tech­nol­o­gy.

Pro­QR, an RNA-fo­cused start­up, an­nounced Fri­day that its lead can­di­date for one form of a rare ge­net­ic eye dis­ease called Leber con­gen­i­tal amau­ro­sis 10 failed in a piv­otal tri­al, show­ing no dif­fer­ence be­tween place­bo on any ef­fi­ca­cy mea­sures.

Pro­QR’s stock $PRQR was down 67% on the news, from $5.64 to $1.88.

The set­back adds to a grow­ing list of dis­ap­point­ments over the past year for an­ti­sense tech­nol­o­gy, a form of gene ther­a­py that, af­ter decades of de­vel­op­ment, had be­gun to show promise for treat­ing a host of rare and not-so-rare dis­eases.

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