Bad news for ARQL's flagship drug, Tiva... l think their burn rate is about $50M per year. They have about $70M in the bank and maybe some cash equivalents. I don't think they [or we] can count on many milestones the remainder of the year, so do they cut staff, sell something else [what?]... or continue spending til the well runs dry?
Best,
graham
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bloomberg.com
ArQule Inc. (ARQL), a maker of experimental cancer drugs, plunged as much as 67 percent after it halted a study of a lung-tumor treatment that failed to meet goals for improving survival rates.
The drugmaker, which has no products on the market, fell 63 percent to $1.85 at 8:34 a.m. New York time, after declining to as low as $1.67. The Woburn, Massachusetts-based company said in a statement today that the trial found no safety concerns with tivantinib, the cancer medicine it is trying to develop with Tokyo-based Daichi Sankyo Healthcare Co. Ltd.
A panel of scientific advisers recommended an early end for the study, dubbed Marquee, because it wasn’t expected to meet its survival goals for patients with non-small cell lung cancer, ArQule said in its statement. The drug was in the third of three stages usually required for U.S. regulatory approval, the company said.
“We are disappointed that the Marquee trial did not provide statistically significant results for overall survival in a disease and treatment setting which remains a major unmet medical need,” Paolo Pucci, ArQule’s chief executive officer, said in the statement.
ArQule shares had fallen 12 percent for the year through yesterday. |
