WELLESLEY, Mass.-- Coley Pharmaceutical Group, Inc. today announced that the company has made the strategic decision to suspend the independent development of ACTILON, its product candidate for the treatment of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Coley will focus its resources towards discovering and developing new TLR Therapeutics(TM), including its preclinical pipeline of synthetic RNA-based drugs designed to stimulate Toll-like receptors (TLRs) 7 and 8, as well as other synthetic agonists and antagonists targeting TLRs 7, 8 and 9. "The decision to suspend a drug development program is a difficult one," commented Robert L. Bratzler, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer for Coley Pharmaceutical Group. "However, we are confident that the changes being made today are the right ones for our shareholders. As a result of these modifications to our drug development program, Coley plans to redirect the necessary resources in our efforts to expand and diversify our portfolio of product candidates and maintain our leadership position in the TLR Therapeutics space."
Nasdaq: COLY is trading down today 1.25 per share or down to $8.64.
As you remember TLR receptors are intracellular innate immunity receptors that recognize among other things viral RNA, DNA and bacterial cell wall components. COLY had a rather big stake in TLR agonists and clinical development programs, so this is surprising to me.
Clincial trail data from ACTILON shows that 5 of 7 patients regressed back to serologically positive for viral infections. These 7 patients completed 48 weeks of therapy by year-end 2006 and were followed to determine if a sustained virologic response (SVR), defined as continued viral clearance for six months after cessation of treatment, was achieved. Today, the company reported that 2 of 7 patients remained HCV viral negative at one- and four-months, respectively, following the cessation of treatment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment