Asthma Test Flop (ICGN)

October 26, 2009 · Filed Under R&D · Comments Off 

Icagen, Inc. (NASDAQ: ICGN) was already a low-priced small cap stock.  That may only be an even lower market capitalization rate company on Tuesday.  The small biotech reported that its Phase IIa exercise-induced asthma study of its Senicapoc failed to demonstrate improvement in the primary study endpoints.

The kiss good-bye: Although the Company will continue to evaluate the data from this trial, it does not anticipate continuing clinical development of senicapoc at this time. After reading that, the rest of the data offered is sort of moot when you consider that it is over for this candidate.

The company said that this included maximum decrease in FEV1, time to recovery of FEV1 after exercise and area under the FEV1 curve for sixty minutes.  The double blind placebo-controlled study had 69 randomized patients receiving either senicapoc at a maintenance dose of 40MG per day or receiving the placebo.  It noted that “all subjects were tested for pulmonary function following a standardized treadmill exercise regimen at baseline, two and four weeks after treatment. The results of the pulmonary function tests were compared between the treatment groups, adjusting for differences in baseline values.”

Here is the company’s remaining drug pipeline in clinical and pre-clinical programs.

Shares got crushed after the stock was reopened for trading.  This closed down 7% at $0.77 and the stock is down over 40% at $0.45 and the 52-week trading range is $0.31 to $1.68.  At the end of the June quarter the company had $24.13 million in cash and equivalents and only $5.483 million listed as its total liabilities.  The total market cap before tonight’s share price drop was $36.2 million, and the implied 40% haircut would put the market cap around $21.7 million.

Jon C. Ogg
October 26, 2009

Tags:

    Subscribe to BioHealth Investor BioHealth Investor RSS Feed