Stoke un­veils new da­ta on ge­net­ic epilep­sy drug — and in­vestors are stoked

Stoke Ther­a­peu­tics’ treat­ment for Dravet syn­drome — a rare, ge­net­ic epilep­sy that be­gins in in­fan­cy — helped re­duce seizures in an ear­ly-stage study.

The treat­ment al­so led to “clin­i­cal­ly mean­ing­ful” im­prove­ments in cog­ni­tion and be­hav­ior com­pared to a nat­ur­al his­to­ry study, Stoke re­port­ed Mon­day af­ter­noon. The news sent Stoke’s shares $STOK up by around 95% in pre­mar­ket trad­ing.

Stoke’s goal is to tack­le the un­der­ly­ing ge­net­ic cause of Dravet syn­drome, which is the in­suf­fi­cient ex­pres­sion of a sodi­um chan­nel pro­tein. Cur­rent­ly, avail­able med­i­cines treat the seizure symp­toms. Stoke’s ex­per­i­men­tal med­i­cine, STK-001, is a short nu­cleotide strand that es­sen­tial­ly “stokes” a still func­tion­al copy of the gene to make more of that sodi­um chan­nel pro­tein.

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