Disappointing news from the laboratory weighed heavily AbVie (NYSE: ABBV) stocks as the trading week began. The company had high hopes for a schizophrenia drug it was developing; however, it did not perform well in recent testing. According to the company’s latest figures, investors traded aggressively out of the shares, leaving them down 12% in late afternoon trading.
Just before the market opened Monday, AbbVie revealed that its emraclidine treatment for schizophrenia failed to meet the primary endpoint of a phase 2 trial. It showed no statistically significant reduction in the benchmark Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) compared to a placebo.
Start your morning smarter! Wake up with Breakfast news in your inbox every market day. Register for free »
The company said, perhaps understating the case, that it is disappointed with the results. It pledged to continue analyzing data from the study to determine next steps with emraclidine. Such results often put an end to the development of a drug.
In the press release about the trial, AbbVie chief scientific officer Roopal Thakkar said the company remains “committed to finding better treatments for people with psychiatric and neurological conditions.”
It is no surprise that management expresses hope that it will successfully develop a new product for such conditions. In early August, it closed an $8.7 billion deal to acquire emraclidine developer Cerevel Therapeutics. The schizophrenia drug was one of the main reasons AbbVie bought the company.
However, Cerevel was not a one-trick pony. For its significant spend, AbbVie has also acquired several other pipeline programs from the neuroscience-focused biotech space. The most promising of these is tavapadone in Parkinson’s disease, which unlike emraclidine has done well in recent late-stage trials.
Have you ever felt like you missed the boat on buying the most successful stocks? Then you would like to hear this.
On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts provides a “Double Down” Stocks recommendation for companies they think are about to pop. If you’re worried that you’ve already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it’s too late. And the numbers speak for themselves:
-
Amazon: If you had invested $1,000 when we doubled in 2010, you would have $23,446!*
-
Apple: If you had invested $1,000 when we doubled in 2008, you would have $42,982!*
-
Netflix: If you had invested $1,000 when we doubled in 2004, you would have $428,758!*
