Mer­sana halves work­force in light of ovar­i­an can­cer tri­al flop, spelling end to its lead ADC

Mer­sana Ther­a­peu­tics will lay off about half its work­force and repri­or­i­tize af­ter a Phase III tri­al fail­ure in plat­inum-re­sis­tant ovar­i­an can­cer, send­ing shares $MRSN tank­ing 72% Thurs­day morn­ing.

The Cam­bridge, MA-based biotech said its an­ti­body-drug con­ju­gate up­i­fi­ta­m­ab ril­sodotin, or Up­Ri, did not hit the main goal of ob­jec­tive re­sponse rate in the sin­gle-arm Phase III UP­LIFT tri­al that en­rolled 268 pa­tients. Med­ical chief Arvin Yang said the tri­al did not repli­cate what was seen from about 100 pa­tients in a Phase Ib dose ex­pan­sion por­tion.

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