Neurocrine axes Takeda-partnered depression program, switches focus for seizure drug after PhII failures

Neu­ro­crine Bio­sciences has been hit with a pair of mid-stage fail­ures for its part­nered can­di­dates in ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der (MDD) and fo­cal on­set seizures (FOS), lead­ing the biotech to wind down the MDD pro­gram al­to­geth­er and home in on a much small­er mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty for the seizure can­di­date.

The place­bo-con­trolled Phase II TERP­SIS tri­al was eval­u­at­ing Take­da-part­nered drug NBI-1065846 in 93 MDD pa­tients with an­he­do­nia, which is the in­abil­i­ty to feel plea­sure. The treat­ment did not meet the pri­ma­ry end­point of change in an­he­do­nia sever­i­ty, mea­sured by the Di­men­sion­al An­he­do­nia Rat­ing Scale score at 57 days. The com­pa­ny said it is dis­con­tin­u­ing fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the drug.

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