Biotech Values

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INCY - Sheddase inhibitor (INCB7839) development program will essentially be scrapped, according to their presentation at the UBS Global Life Sciences conference. Slides from the presentation are available here.

Apparently, the hypothesis that the drug was based on was not validated using independent datasets. There are enzymes called sheddases which cleave HER2, producing a truncated form known as p95HER2. Incyte's hypothesis, which was based on earlier published data, was that patients with high levels of p95HER2 have poorer outcomes on Herceptin, and therefore the addition of INCB7839 would be beneficial in this subgroup. However, using two large, independent datasets they found that the opposite was true. The p95-positive patients did better on Herceptin than their p95-negative counterparts.

It just goes to show that even published data is often wrong, and this often has implications for drug development. It reminds me of the conclusions of a well-known paper by John Ioannidis.

Thankfully, this wasn't a major program for Incyte and at least they'll be able to focus resources on other candidates in their pipeline. Of course, ruxolitinib is still their lead compound and from the looks of it, their sales team is ready to hit the ground running once it is approved.