Stock nose­dives for car­dio­vas­cu­lar drug­mak­er Ar­ca fol­low­ing Phase IIb AF fail­ure

A small bio­phar­ma near Den­ver is watch­ing its stock plunge fol­low­ing news that its Phase IIb heart drug was a bit of a bust. The atri­al fib­ril­la­tion drug, Gen­caro, failed to per­form any bet­ter than the study’s con­trol.

The com­pa­ny, Ar­ca Bio­phar­ma, took a red her­ring ap­proach to its news re­lease, fo­cus­ing hard on its da­ta for the US pop­u­la­tion rather than the over­all study.

The tri­al, called GE­NET­IC-AF, was test­ing Gen­cara (bucin­dolol hy­drochlo­ride) as a ge­net­i­cal­ly-tar­get­ed treat­ment for AF in pa­tients with heart fail­ure and re­duced ven­tric­u­lar ejec­tion frac­tion. The ac­tive con­trol was a drug called meto­pro­lol suc­ci­nate (Toprol-XL).

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