There's a back story. I'd let this play itself out before committing too much capital
Myriad Genetics Inc., maker of a test to determine whether breast cancer patients can benefit from an experimental group of medicines, fell the most since May after the leading drug in that class failed in a study.
Sanofi-Aventis SA reported yesterday that its drug, BSI- 201, failed to meet its primary goals of helping patients live longer with a difficult-to-treat type of breast cancer. The study was in the final stage of testing typically needed for regulatory approval. AstraZeneca Plc said it canceled a planned final-stage test of its similar drug, called olaparib.
Myriad, based in Salt Lake City, makes laboratory tests to pinpoint which patients have genetic mutations that make them likely to respond to gene-based treatments for cancer and other diseases. Sanofi’s drug is one of a group of medicines known as parp inhibitors designed to prevent breast cancer from repairing itself after being blasted with chemotherapy.
“Parp hype ends today,” said Amit Hazan, analyst at Gleacher & Co. in New York, in a research report today on the diminished prospects for Myriad’s test. “It now looks like parp will contribute nothing until 2015, at the earliest, and that is increasingly uncertain too.”
Shares Drop
Myriad fell $2.14, or 9.6 percent, to $20.27 at 11:27 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. The shares earlier declined to as low as $19.82, their biggest intraday decline since May 5.
AstraZeneca, based in London, recently decided to shift its research focus for olaparib to ovarian cancer from breast malignancies, spokeswoman Sarah Lindgreen said in a telephone interview today.
“We haven’t decided to abandon breast cancer studies completely.” Lindgreen said. The company was about to start the third and final stage of testing generally needed for U.S. approval, and that has been canceled for breast tumors, she said. Any breast cancer research is on hold until data from ovarian cancer trials is in, she said.
Paris-based Sanofi said it is still analyzing its trial results in breast cancer. Sanofi is also studying the drug in other hard-to-treat tumors, including lung, brain, ovarian and pancreatic malignancies.
Most cancer drugs work by blasting DNA in the malignant cells with chemotherapy or radiation. The malignant cells can fight back by using parp enzymes to fix damaged strands of DNA within tumors. The new medicines are designed to block the enzymes, helping standard treatments to kill the cancer.
To contact the reporters on this story: Tom Randall in New York at trandall6@bloomberg.net. Allison Connolly in Frankfurt at aconnolly4@bloomberg.net |
