The reasons for the suspension of Roche's tominersen phase III trial were repeated, and analysts put forward four hypotheses

CompilationFan Dongdong

In March of this year, Roche pressed the pause button for the Phase III trial of Huntington's disease drug tominersen.

On Tuesday, Roche announced tominersen follow-up trial data, aiming to provide some clues as to why the drugmaker stopped its phase III trial.

In 2017, Roche obtained the rights to tominersen's drug assets by paying a license fee of US$45 million to Ionis Pharmaceuticals.

The results of the test showed that in terms of improving the symptoms of patients, tominersen showed a treatment effect worse than that of the placebo group, and especially in the high-dose patient group, the efficacy performance was particularly inferior.

Stifel wrote that the data released by Roche on Tuesday did not really link any of the above reasons to the performance of the drug, so Stifel speculated that the reason for the trial failure is more likely to be the result of a combination of multiple factors.

The drug is an anti-nucleic acid drug.

Roche pointed out that the committee's decision did not involve new security risks.

Stifel also put forward a notable market point of view, that is, if tominersen is caused to stop the drug, it also exists in other ASO drugs, and it will be a huge challenge for Ionis.