Tuesday’s worst-performing stock happened to be another biotech company. While it’s the norm for biotech stocks to be frequently volatile, this particular one was working on a much-anticipated Covid-19 treatment. Atea Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AVIR) crashed after the company confirmed its antiviral, oral Covid pill flopped in a crucial clinical trial.
Atea is a mid-cap biotech firm but has partnered with pharmaceutical giant Roche (OTC: RHHBY) to help develop this particular oral treatment, known as AT-527. While most investor attention has been towards vaccines, there’s also been spillover interest into the field of oral, antiviral medications. Patients can take an oral treatment as an anaphylaxis, especially for people who are at low to moderate risk.
While hopes were high going into the trial, the results were undeniable. The phase 2 trial in question didn’t meet the primary endpoints, with most patients failing to see significant improvement in symptoms. Two-thirds of these patients were at low-to-mid risk. However, the remainder that were designated higher risk saw significant improvements overall, so the trial wasn’t a total failure. Regardless, Wall Street didn’t see the news that way.
“The primary endpoint was not achieved in the overall study population in patients with mild or moderate COVID-19, however, MOONSONG topline data suggest that AT-527 has antiviral activity in high-risk patients with underlying health conditions as we previously reported in the Phase 2 hospitalized study,” said Jean-Pierre Sommadossi, Atea’s CEO. “We remain committed to our goal of developing and delivering AT-527 as an oral antiviral that will address treatment needs as COVID-19 continues to evolve.”
Prior to this, Atea had marketed its treatment as being a potential competitor to other oral drugs developed by the likes of Merck and Penanta Pharma. However, having lost the confidence of shareholders, Atea will need to go out of its way to prove itself forward going, namely by proving that these results were a one-time thing. If its upcoming phase 3 trial focuses on higher-risk patients instead and the results are more favorable, then it might be able to regain this lost confidence in the end.
Shares were down as much as 75% over the course of the day following the news. Atea’s partner, Roche, was also down a couple percentage points as well. For most big pharma companies, Covid-related treatments aren’t that exciting for investors anymore. It’s just the smaller biotech firms that are seeing this kind of volatility from Covid-related developments.
Atea Pharmaceuticals Company Profile
Atea Pharmaceuticals Inc is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in discovering and developing therapies to address the unmet medical needs of patients with severe viral diseases. Its programs are focused on the development of orally- administered direct acting antivirals for the treatment of patients with COVID-19 in the hospital and community settings, the treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C infection, the treatment of patients with dengue, and the treatment of high-risk patients with severe respiratory syncytial virus infection. The company’s medicinal chemistry, virology, and pharmacology expertise, bolstered by its collective experience in drug development, enables it to pioneer new advancements in antiviral science. – Warrior Trading News
