Oc­u­lar Ther­a­peu­tix ham­mered by a PhII fail­ure in dry eye dis­ease — shares tank

Oc­u­lar Ther­a­peu­tix $OCUL has had its ups and downs in the 7 years since it went pub­lic. Fri­day was one of those down days.

The Bed­ford, MA-based biotech re­port­ed that its lead ex­per­i­men­tal eye drug, OTX-CSI (cy­closporine in­tra­canalic­u­lar in­sert), failed a Phase II tri­al for dry eye dis­ease. And the stock ex­pe­ri­enced one of its pe­ri­od­ic melt­downs, drop­ping more than 30% ahead of the bell.

The ther­a­py flat failed the pri­ma­ry end­point: in­creased tear pro­duc­tion at 12 weeks as mea­sured by the Schirmer’s Test com­pared to the ve­hi­cle con­trol group. And while in­ves­ti­ga­tors called out an im­prove­ment from base­line in “signs of dry eye dis­ease as mea­sured by to­tal corneal flu­o­res­cein stain­ing (CFS) and symp­toms of dry eye dis­ease as mea­sured by the vi­su­al ana­logue scale (VAS) eye dry­ness in sub­jects treat­ed with the OTX-CSI in­sert,” it wasn’t sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

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