Anavex’s experimental drug fails Rett syndrome study, stock falls

Anavex Life Sci­ences, a biotech com­pa­ny that has come un­der fire for try­ing to spin its clin­i­cal tri­al re­sults, wants to claim par­tial suc­cess on a late-stage tri­al in kids with Rett syn­drome, a rare ge­net­ic neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der.  How­ev­er, the biotech’s own ad-hoc analy­sis says oth­er­wise.

Anavex said Tues­day that its study of a com­pound known as blar­came­sine “showed im­prove­ment on the key co-pri­ma­ry end­point Rett Syn­drome Be­hav­iour Ques­tion­naire” (RS­BQ), a 45-item ques­tion­naire con­duct­ed by pa­tient care­givers, but it failed to meet the oth­er pri­ma­ry end­point of Clin­i­cal Glob­al Im­pres­sion – Im­prove­ment (CGI-I), a 7-point score giv­en by study in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

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