ReNeu­ron’s stem cell treat­ment fails a small stroke study, but the biotech says it’s ready for piv­otal

ReNeu­ron’s mid-stage stem cell study on stroke dis­abil­i­ty failed to hit a mod­est pri­ma­ry end­point. But af­ter stretch­ing and twist­ing to reach what it was look­ing for, the biotech cit­ed a few dif­fer­ent pa­tient suc­cess­es and called it all dis­tinct­ly pos­i­tive.

Out of on­ly 21 pa­tients be­ing test­ed, re­searchers had hoped to see 2 of them achieve a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in a grasp­ing and lift­ing test three months af­ter they were treat­ed. They didn’t get it. They did get three hits, but on­ly af­ter ex­tend­ing their ob­ser­va­tion to three, six and 12 months. And 15 of 21 pa­tients had what they called a “clin­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant” im­prove­ment in dis­abil­i­ty and func­tion.

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