With the ink on their $25M Astel­las deal still dry­ing, Aquinox shares get blast­ed on PhI­II fail­ure

Just weeks af­ter Astel­las agreed to pay Aquinox Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals $25 mil­lion up­front for Asian rights to their lead drug rosip­tor, the lit­tle biotech says their Phase III tri­al was a com­plete dis­as­ter, leav­ing noth­ing to sal­vage.

CEO David Main didn’t sug­ar­coat it. No mat­ter how hard they stud­ied the da­ta, the in­ter­sti­tial cys­ti­tis drug clear­ly couldn’t beat a place­bo. He said:

We have con­duct­ed a num­ber of sen­si­tiv­i­ty, sub­pop­u­la­tion, and sec­ondary end­point analy­ses and none demon­strate a ben­e­fit of rosip­tor over place­bo.

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