Zyner­ba shares crushed (again) as back-to-back flops leave lead drug un­der a cloud

A week ago, Zyner­ba shares $ZYNE were beat­en up af­ter the biotech said its mid-stage study for a cannabis-de­rived drug had failed to im­prove the lives of epilep­sy pa­tients. This morn­ing, the De­von, PA-based biotech dou­bled down on fail­ure with news of an­oth­er Phase II flop — this time us­ing the same cannabi­noid to treat os­teoarthri­tis.

The biotech frankly con­ced­ed that both dos­es of ZYN002 used in the Phase II had failed to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce knee pain caused by os­teoarthri­tis, done in by the place­bo re­sponse. In­ves­ti­ga­tors did get a hit on a com­pos­ite score for a greater than 30% re­duc­tion in dai­ly pain scores, and that is what they used to spin this study in­to a suc­cess sto­ry — leav­ing Zyner­ba ex­ecs plan­ning for a Phase III piv­otal tri­al.

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