Treve­na says its PhI­II pain drug pro­gram is a win­ner, but shares crater

Treve­na plans to beat a di­rect path to the FDA af­ter boast­ing of a pair of Phase III suc­cess­es for its lead drug, oliceri­dine, in mod­er­ate-to-se­vere acute pain. But its en­thu­si­asm wasn’t re­flect­ed in the bru­tal beat­ing its shares took ear­ly to­day.

Fol­low­ing up on a heart drug flop last spring, the biotech $TRVN says that their pain drug hit the pri­ma­ry end­points on bat­ting back pain com­pared to a place­bo in post-sur­gi­cal pa­tients. But the com­pa­ny hedged its com­ment on a com­par­i­son with mor­phine, with the high­er dos­es prov­ing non-in­fe­ri­or to mor­phine and the low­er dos­es falling short of the bar.

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