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Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) fell ~4%marking the second straight session of losses after Leerink Partners flagged concerns about a mid-stage trial the company has designed for its non-opioid pain candidate, VX-548.
At the Jefferies London Healthcare Conference on Tuesday, Vertex (VRTX), Chief Operating Officer Stuart Arbuckle updated on the company’s Phase 2 trial for VX-548 in diabetic peripheral neuropathy, a common form of peripheral neuropathic pain.
According to Arbuckle, the trial is not designed to make statistical comparisons between the study drug and the reference drug, pregabalin, marketed by Viatris (VTRS) as Lyrica for diabetic neuropathy.
“It’s there for context because we know it’s going to be something important that we’ll have to consider as we move into Phase III. But we won’t be able to make statistical comparisons between what we see with the 548 doses and what we see with Lyrica,” he added.
Leerink Partners analyst David Risinger noted late Tuesday that the company’s decision to ignore a placebo group for the study “is negative for investor sentiment.”
“We were surprised that the VX-548 trial did not have a placebo group because the predecessor molecule (VX-150) was studied in Ph2 neuropathic pain versus placebo,” Risinger, with an outperform rating and a target of $442 per action in action, he wrote.
The 12-week dose-ranging study is expected to generate data before the end of the year, Vertex (VRTX) said, with its third-quarter 2023 financial results earlier this month.
