What happened
Shares of ORIC Pharmaceuticals (ORIC 5.21%) were crashing 31.1% as of 11:05 a.m. ET. The steep decline came after the company announced it was discontinuing the development of its experimental cancer drug ORIC-101.
So what
It's not unusual for a drugmaker to cancel an early-stage program. That's especially the case with oncology candidates. Nearly 4 in 10 cancer drugs in phase 1 testing advance into phase 2 testing, based on historical data analyzed by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
However, the discontinuation of a candidate in phase 1 testing is really bad news for a biotech stock when that candidate is the lead program. That was the case for ORIC with the halting of development of ORIC-101.
ORIC didn't have much choice, though. The company's interim analyses of two phase 1b studies featuring ORIC-101 found that the experimental drug simply didn't show enough clinical activity to move forward. And there weren't any doubts about the data. ORIC Pharmaceuticals chief medical officer Pratik Multani said, "We believe both studies were well designed, allowing us to thoroughly and efficiently answer an important clinical question."
Image source: Getty Images.
Now what
The good news for ORIC is that it has other pipeline programs. The company will now focus on ORIC-533, ORIC-114, and ORIC-944, all of which are currently in early-stage clinical studies. ORIC expects to report initial data from these three programs in the first half of 2023.
