Mast’s sick­le cell drug flunks PhI­II, eclips­ing shares

Turn out the lights, the par­ty is over at Mast Ther­a­peu­tics. The San Diego-based biotech, a pen­ny stock mi­cro­cap, an­nounced af­ter the mar­ket closed on Tues­day that its Phase III study of an ex­per­i­men­tal drug for sick­le cell dis­ease flopped, un­able to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it­self from a sug­ar pill.

Mast’s al­ready bat­tered shares $MSTX dropped 76%, to 13 cents a share, on the news.

There’s some analy­sis of the da­ta left to do on ve­polox­am­er, but the com­pa­ny say’s it is ready to wash its hands of the drug. Then it can ex­am­ine its re­main­ing op­tions.

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