Biotech Values

[dangerM]

KDS at last ends ATIR-101 program

For a brief moment I was impressed by their grandesse to retract the MAA and even halt the ph3 and totally end their (in my opinion harmful) ATIR-101 program

https://kiadis.com/investors/regulatory-news/single-regulatory-news/?1945703

... Discontinues development of ATIR101, stopping phase 3 trial ...

Lahr continued, “As part of our strategic portfolio review, we reviewed progress of our phase 3 study, which was designed to show superiority of ATIR101 over the PTCy protocol. We identified that in the phase 3 a higher percentage of patients than expected dropped out of the study before receiving ATIR101. We subsequently collected additional recent external data, which show that outcomes with PTCy have better survival and lower severe GVHD than literature showed when we designed and started the phase 3 study. Based on these data, we no longer believe that the phase 3 ATIR study as currently designed with 250 patients can demonstrate superiority over PTCy and at a minimum would require a much larger trial. In the best interest of patients, we have therefore taken the decision to discontinue the ATIR101 study with immediate effect and are proceeding with close down activities.”

... The company ended the third quarter of 2019 with approximately €47 million of cash.

However, quite interesting to bury the burial of your lead program only in the lower half of your press release as "strategic portfolio review".

As well, I find it quite misleading to quote the cash balance without the debt (the 2019H2 interim report has ~ 44mn EUR non-current liabilities, 20mn current liabilities, 61mn cash, cf. https://kiadis.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Q2-FS_final_AC.pdf).

dM

P.S.: I can only speculate, but perhaps it's a corollary to Zebra's law that a reverse-merger company will kill it's original programs.