OncoMed shares crushed as Celgene-partnered lead drug flops and Bayer takes a pass on options
It’s a black day at OncoMed $OMED. A little more than a year after its number two drug foundered in a Phase II failure, its top drug demcizumab — partnered with Celgene in a multibillion-dollar deal — has flopped in a Phase II as well. And the biotech followed up with the news that Bayer is bypassing a tie-up on two other key programs, completing a one-two punch.
The mid-stage study of demcizumab was an embarrassing failure for the primary as well as the key secondary endpoint in the study of metastatic pancreatic cancer — a tough field in cancer R&D. Combining demcizumab with Abraxane and gemcitabine in untreated patients essentially mirrored the PFS results for the comparative triple that replaced OncoMed’s drug with a placebo.
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