Despite failing its PhII test, Xenon sees future for major depression drug

Xenon Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der drug can­di­date didn’t reach sta­tis­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance ver­sus place­bo in the pri­ma­ry end­point of a mid-stage tri­al, but the Cana­di­an biotech — and an­a­lysts — say the da­ta could still jus­ti­fy fur­ther de­vel­op­ment.

The Phase II X-NO­VA clin­i­cal tri­al stud­ied 10 mg and 20 mg dos­es of Xenon’s Kv7 potas­si­um chan­nel open­er, dubbed XEN1101, in just over 160 peo­ple with MDD. XEN1101 did not reach sig­nif­i­cance in the pri­ma­ry end­point of change in Mont­gomery-Ås­berg De­pres­sion Rat­ing Scale (MADRS) ver­sus place­bo at six weeks (p=0.135).

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