AstraZeneca shares fell as much as 11% in London trading on Wednesday, erasing roughly $27 billion in market value, after the company announced that its experimental heart drug Wainua failed a pivotal late-stage clinical trial.
The Phase III CARDIO-TTRansform study found that Wainua, a treatment for transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy developed jointly with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, did not meet its primary goal of reducing deaths and recurrent cardiac emergencies over 140 weeks compared to placebo. Ionis shares dropped up to 15% in premarket trading, while rival Alnylam Pharmaceuticals saw its stock rise 16%. Among patients not previously on stabilizer therapy, Wainua showed a nominally significant reduction in mortality and cardiac events.
Complete trial data will be presented at the European Society of Cardiology meeting in August. The setback follows an FDA advisory panel vote against recommending AstraZeneca's breast cancer drug camizestrant earlier this year.