Pro­tag­o­nist aborts lead ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis pro­gram af­ter drug fiz­zles in PhI­Ib, stock craters

The lead ther­a­py at Pro­tag­o­nist has flunked a mid-stage tri­al, push­ing the Newark-based com­pa­ny to pull the plug on its ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis drug PTG-100.

The news is tank­ing the com­pa­ny’s stock $PT­GX, which is down near­ly 60% in pre-mar­ket trad­ing.

The de­ci­sion came af­ter an in­ter­im analy­sis of a Phase IIb study, which found the tri­al to be “fu­tile based on an analy­sis of the pri­ma­ry end­point of clin­i­cal re­mis­sion.” No safe­ty con­cerns were not­ed in the analy­sis.

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