Drug development company BiolineRX Ltd. (Nasdaq: BLRX); TASE:BLRX) today announced that results from an interim analysis of the Phase II/III CLARITY trial of its lead drug schizophrenia treatment BL-1020 has failed. The company said that it has decided to discontinue the study.
BiolineRX CEO Kinneret Savitsky said, "These disappointing results underscore the difficulty of treating cognition in schizophrenia, which remains an unmet medical need."
The decision to go it alone in the BL-1020 trial was a big gamble by BioLineRX which at one point licensed the product to Cypress Bioscience. However, the drug returned to BioLineRX after Cyrpess was acquired by Royalty Pharma.
As a result of the CLARITY study termination, BiolineRX expects planned R&D expenses will decrease for the remainder of 2013 and part of 2014 by $6 to $7 million, thus allowing the company’s current cash reserves of $28 million to fund its expected operations into 2015. The company expects to meet a number of significant clinical milestones related to other pipeline assets in the next 12-18 months.
Following publication of the results, the company's share price fell 49% to NIS 7 and on Nasdaq the share price is down 50% at $1.90, giving a market cap of $43 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 20, 2013
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