J&J's Xarelto misses in pair of Phase III trials in acute medically ill and heart failure patients

Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) reported that anticoagulant Xarelto rivaroxaban missed the primary endpoints in both the Phase III MARINER and COMMANDER HF trials. Data were presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in Munich and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The double-blind, international MARINER trial enrolled 12,019 acute medically ill patients who were at an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and evaluated once-daily 7.5 or 10 mg oral Xarelto compared with placebo for 45 days to prevent symptomatic VTE events and VTE-related death following hospital discharge.

On MARINER's primary endpoint, Xarelto failed to significantly reduce the composite of VTE and VTE-related death vs. placebo (0.83% vs. 1.1%, HR=0.76; 95% CI: 0.52, 1.09, p=0.136). Xarelto did significantly reduce the incidence of non-fatal VTE events vs. placebo (0.18% vs. 0.42%, HR=0.44, 95% CI: 0.22, 0.89, p=0.023)...