On­copep­tides stock craters as it pulls can­cer drug Pepax­to from the mar­ket

Shares of On­copep­tides crashed more than 70% in ear­ly Fri­day trad­ing af­ter the com­pa­ny said it’s pulling its mul­ti­ple myelo­ma drug Pepax­to (mel­pha­lan flufe­namide) from the US mar­ket af­ter fail­ing a con­fir­ma­to­ry tri­al. The move will force the com­pa­ny to close its US and EU busi­ness units and en­act sig­nif­i­cant lay­offs.

The FDA had sched­uled an ad­comm meet­ing next Thurs­day to dis­cuss Pepax­to, which first won ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval in Feb­ru­ary and costs about $19,000 per course of treat­ment. The com­mit­tee was to weigh in on whether the con­fir­ma­to­ry tri­al demon­strat­ed a worse over­all sur­vival in the treat­ment arm com­pared to the con­trol arm.

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