Health and Healthcare

Is Aquinox Pharmaceuticals Done?

Chris Lange

Published: June 27, 2018 10:20 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 9:50 pm

Aquinox Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: AQXP) saw its shares crash on Wednesday after the firm gave a disappointing update for a late-stage trial. Unfortunately, the firm’s Phase 3 LEADERSHIP 301 clinical trial evaluating rosiptor (AQX-1125) for the treatment of interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome failed to meet its primary endpoint.

Essentially, rosiptor failed to achieve a statistically significant reduction in the mean change from the baseline at week 12 in maximum daily bladder pain score compared to the placebo arm in the female subjects.

However, it gets worse from here. Management believes that these results support halting all further development activities with rosiptor. Following the results of this trial, the firm will be undertaking a thorough evaluation of its pipeline and other strategic options available to the company.

David Main, president and chief executive of Aquinox, commented:

This is a disappointing result for Aquinox and for patients. LEADERSHIP 301 was a robust and well-conducted trial, and we believe the results are definitive. We have conducted a number of sensitivity, subpopulation, and secondary endpoint analyses and none demonstrate a benefit of rosiptor over placebo. We had hoped to deliver better news to the patients and investigators that made the personal commitment to participate in the trial.

Excluding Wednesday’s move, Aquinox actually had outperformed the broad markets, with its stock up about 30% in 2018.

Shares of Aquinox were last seen down more than 84% at $2.38, with a consensus analyst price target of $25.25 and a 52-week range of $2.53 to $16.90.

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