Sage’s quick flip in­to PhI­II crash­es as lead drug fails bad­ly for rare type of seizures

Af­ter build­ing in­tense in­ter­est in its lead drug for su­per-re­frac­to­ry sta­tus epilep­ti­cus with da­ta from tiny stud­ies, Sage Ther­a­peu­tics $SAGE says the drug failed bad­ly in Phase III.

Com­par­ing brex­anolone (SAGE-547) with a place­bo, the drug act­ed just like a sug­ar pill, with a 43.9% re­sponse for the drug com­pared to 42.4% in the place­bo arm — and a mis­er­able p-val­ue of 0.8775.

Sage’s shares dropped more than 20% on the news. But by the af­ter­noon the biotech had trimmed its loss­es, with the stock down about 14% — a mod­est re­treat giv­en the bad judg­ment this biotech has shown.

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