Gossamer Bio Inc stock lost three quarters of its value today as the market questioned the performance of the company’s experimental hypertension drug in a Phase 2 clinical trial despite an upbeat assessment from the company.
“We are very pleased to share that seralutinib significantly improved hemodynamic, biomarker, and right heart structural and functional measures in a heavily treated pulmonary arterial hypertension patient population,” said Faheem Hasnain, CEO of Gossamer.
“Importantly, these efficacy results were paired with a favorable safety and tolerability profile, something that has challenged past development of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in hypertension.”
But SVB Securities analyst Joseph Schwartz told investors that the therapy didn't outperform Merck & Co Inc's sotatercept drug.
"We expect the Street to be disappointed in these top-line results given both endpoints fell below the (Phase 2) placebo-adjusted data from sotatercept," he was quoted as saying.
"We note that the topline data also fell below our base case expectation for seralutinib vs. placebo to show a 20% to 30%" reduction in pulmonary vascular resistance.”
The Phase 2 study enrolled 86 patients with WHO Functional Class II or III hypertension, with 42 randomized to the placebo arm and 44 randomized to the seralutinib arm.
A mean difference in pulmonary vascular resistance between the placebo and seralutinib arms equating to a placebo-corrected improvement of 14.3% was observed in the study, the company said.
Seralutinib was generally well tolerated in the study, with those treatment emergent adverse events that were reported being mild to moderate in severity.
Shares of Gossamer slumped 75.24% to $2.30.
Contact Jeremy at jeremy@proactiveinvestors.com