Zai Lab bombs Phase IIa tri­al in atopic der­mati­tis, junks the pro­gram to shift re­sources to the pipeline

Nas­daq dar­ling and Shang­hai hot­shot Zai Lab is ditch­ing one of its late-stage drug pro­grams af­ter bomb­ing a Phase IIa tri­al. The com­pa­ny said Fri­day that its top­i­cal prod­uct ZL-3101 (al­so called Fu­gan) did not clear up eczema.

The drug was test­ed in a dou­ble-blind, ran­dom­ized, and place­bo-con­trolled tri­al with 295 Chi­nese pa­tients with atopic der­mati­tis. Fu­gan was safe and well-tol­er­at­ed, but al­so a bit use­less. The treat­ment showed no dif­fer­ence com­pared to place­bo in the pri­ma­ry end­point: a change in the eczema area and sever­i­ty in­dex score at day 21.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER