Sev­en years af­ter li­cens­ing BTK in­hibitor from Bio­gen, be­lea­guered pen­ny­s­tock biotech part­ner con­cedes de­feat

A BTK in­hibitor Bio­gen punt­ed out of its pipeline years ago has flopped its first clin­i­cal test.

Sune­sis Phar­ma said it would not be tak­ing ve­cabru­ti­nib in­to the Phase II por­tion of its Phase Ib/II tri­al af­ter re­view­ing ini­tial da­ta that sug­gest lim­it­ed ef­fi­ca­cy even at the high­est dose. The tri­al had en­rolled adult pa­tients with re­lapsed/re­frac­to­ry chron­ic lym­pho­cyt­ic leukemia (CLL) and oth­er B-cell ma­lig­nan­cies. The safe­ty pro­file was “ex­cel­lent”; it just didn’t seem to have much of an ef­fect.

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