GenVec Value Slammed on Drug Failure

GenVec called that first interim encouraging, but other efficacy data presented at that time was troublesome, raising doubts about the drug and causing the stock to sink.

The median survival in the study, measured in November 2008, was 9.9 months for both TNFerade and the control arms. No difference.

Survival as a function of time was also running against TNFerade. At 12 months, 39.9% of TNFerade-treated patients were alive compared with 22.5% of patients in the study's control arm. However, at 24 months, only 10.6% of patients treated with TNFerade were still alive compared with 11.3% of patients in the control arm.

In other words, the benefit of TNFerade had vanished.

In its press release Monday, GenVec didn't disclose median survival data for the TNFerade study at the second interim analysis, nor did the company say what percentage of patients were still alive in each arm of the study.

The TNFerade failure leaves GenVec with a pipeline consisting of a very early-stage hearing loss drug partnered with Novartis and a handful of early-stage vaccine programs.

-- Reported by Adam Feuerstein in Boston.

Follow Adam Feuerstein on Twitter.

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