Ironwood’s stock drops 40% as short bowel syndrome drug shows mixed efficacy in PhIII

Iron­wood Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals’ GLP-2 ana­log hit the pri­ma­ry end­point in a reg­is­tra­tional short bow­el syn­drome study, but fell short of key sec­ondary out­comes in a slight­ly larg­er pa­tient sub­group, send­ing shares plum­met­ing.

The Phase III STARS tri­al in­ves­ti­gat­ed once-week­ly dos­es of the drug, apraglu­tide, against place­bo in 164 adults with short bow­el syn­drome with in­testi­nal fail­ure (SBS-IF).

Around half of those dosed in the study had a stoma, while the re­main­der were “colon-in-con­ti­nu­ity” pa­tients, which was dubbed the “un­der­served ma­jor­i­ty” by Vec­tivBio, the orig­i­na­tor of apraglu­tide that Iron­wood ac­quired last year in a $1 bil­lion deal.

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