Feb. 25 Quick Takes: Vanda’s Phase III miss; plus Iovance; 1st-twoXAR; app for AFib, stroke; ICER-Aetion; new-look Purple Book, and more
Vanda’s itch therapy misses in atopic dermatitis
Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:VNDA) shares tumbled after market close Tuesday after tradipitant missed the primary endpoint in the Phase III EPIONE trial to treat atopic dermatitis in patients with severe pruritis. The NK1R antagonist led to a 3.61 reduction on the Worst Itch Numeric Rating Scale (WI-NRS) at week 8 vs. a 3.43 point reduction for placebo (p=0.5667). However, the company said that after adjusting for differences in baseline atopic dermatitis severity -- measured by Investigator Global Assessment (IGA) score -- tradipitant reduced WI-NRS scores by 4.36 points vs. 3.28 points for placebo (p=0.0217). Vanda was off $0.87 to $10.60 in after-hours trading.
Iovance rises amid report of potential sale
Iovance Biotherapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ:IOVA) gained $6.77 (27%) to $31.46 Tuesday after a report in Bloomberg citing undisclosed sources stated that the company was exploring a sale and has had preliminary talks with potential buyers. Iovance told BioCentury it “does not comment on speculation.” The company is developing autologous tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) cell therapies for cancer. ...