AstraZeneca lost about £19 billion in market value on Thursday after its Wainua drug missed the main goal of a late-stage heart disease trial.
AstraZeneca (LSE:AZN) shares dipped sharply in early trading on Thursday after the company said its heart drug Wainua had failed to meet the main goal of a Phase III trial, wiping around £19 billion off the pharmaceutical giant’s market value, according to Proactive Investors.
Shares dropped by as much as 9.55% in early London dealing and were down 8.9% at 12,970p by late morning, against Wednesday’s close of 14,240p. That leaves the stock within its 52-week range of roughly 10,004p to 15,730p, having traded above 15,700p as recently as February.
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Trial results
The Phase III CARDIO-TTRansform trial tested eplontersen, marketed as Wainua, in patients with transthyretin-mediated amyloid cardiomyopathy, a rare and often fatal heart condition. AstraZeneca and its US partner Ionis Pharmaceuticals said in a joint statement that the drug did not meet its primary endpoint, a composite of cardiovascular death and recurrent cardiovascular events measured over 140 weeks, when compared with placebo. Ionis chief executive Brett Monia said the results reflect an “evolving treatment landscape” in which most trial patients were already taking a separate stabiliser drug.
In a pre-specified subgroup of patients who received eplontersen without a stabiliser, the companies reported a “nominally significant” benefit, with the risk of death and cardiovascular events cut by 29%. No such benefit was seen in patients already on a stabiliser at the start of the study. The companies said the drug’s safety profile was consistent with earlier trials and that full results would be presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in August.
Wainua is already approved in more than 20 countries for a related nerve condition, hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis, and AstraZeneca and Ionis had been seeking to expand its use into the much larger heart failure population. The trial enrolled 1,432 patients across 130 sites in 20 countries and was described by the companies as the largest study yet conducted in this patient group.
Wall Street’s consensus price target for AstraZeneca stood at 16,211p before Thursday’s announcement, well above the level to which shares fell after the trial news. Sentiment on the stock had been broadly positive coming into the results, with recent coverage citing a string of oncology approvals and collaborations. Thursday’s failure marks a rare setback for a pipeline that has otherwise delivered a steady run of regulatory wins this year.
Investors will now focus on the fuller data set due at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in August, which should clarify whether the monotherapy signal in eplontersen points to a narrower path to approval in heart disease. AstraZeneca’s other big franchises, including Enhertu and Tagrisso, are unaffected by the setback, but Thursday’s fall is a reminder of how heavily the stock’s premium valuation rests on the next wave of pipeline readouts.