Shares of Alnylam fell on Friday after the company Pfizer Heart disease treatments that rival PFE fell short of expectations in a three-and-a-half-year study.
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Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY) tested its drug, vutrisiran, in patients with ATTR amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy. This disease causes abnormal protein to build up in the heart, causing damage. After 30 months, recipients of vutrisiran were 13.8 percent less likely to die from any cause. After 42 months, patients had a 36 percent reduction in the risk of death.
But investors expected a 32% reduction in risk after 30 months, William Blair analyst Myles Minter said in a report.
“Objectively, this data does not appear to meet the aforementioned bar for investors and therefore there is weakness in pre-market trading,” he said.
In early trading, Alnylam shares fell more than 7% to 265.90. Shares are up 50% this year and have a near-perfect IBD Digital Relative Strength Rating of 98, putting Alnylam in the top 2% of all stocks in terms of trailing-12-month performance. Its Composite Rating, a measure of fundamental and technical strength, is a strong 96 out of 99.
Alnylam Stock: Pfizer, BridgeBio Beat
Vutrisiran could ultimately compete with Pfizer’s Vyndaqel, an approved treatment for cardiomyopathy that generated $3.32 billion in sales last year.
The drugs use different mechanisms to treat the same disease. Vyndaqel works by preventing an abnormal protein called amyloid from spreading. It also stabilizes protein levels. Vutrisiran turns off the gene responsible for making the protein.
Promisingly, Vutrisiran met all 10 primary and secondary goals of the study. However, Minter noted, 39% of patients in the placebo group had been receiving Vyndaqel for a median of 11.3 months prior to the study. This confounds the results somewhat, making it difficult to compare which drug is superior.
The field of cardiomyopathy is also becoming increasingly popular. BridgeBio Pharma (BBIO) hopes to win approval for a treatment called acoramidis in November. Shares of the biotech rose 10.6% to 27.24 after the market opened. Pfizer shares fell slightly to 28.70.
Minter maintained his outperform rating on Alnylam stock.
“We continue to believe that vutrisiran is an effective therapy that will be competitive in the growing market (TTR cardiomyopathy) and we would be buyers now given the weakness of Alnylam,” he said.
Follow Allison Gatlin on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @IBD_AGatlin.
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