New Haven’s Achillion Pharmaceuticals’ stock price was down as high as 52 percent in pre-market trading today after a late Friday announcement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would keep a clinical hold its Hepatitis C drug candidate sovaprevir.
The hold, put into place in July after researcher observed high levels of liver enzymes in patients given a combination of sovaprevir and another drug, required Achillion to delay its clinical or ongoing investigation of the drug, and forbade it from recruiting or giving the drug to study subjects.
Achillion said it will pursue several other HCV candidates in its pipeline and continue to try to convince the FDA to lift the hold.
“While we are disappointed that we were not able to resolve the clinical hold at this time despite having addressed all the issues, we believe the breadth of our portfolio allows us to quickly advance other all-oral combination regiments for the treatment of HCV,” Milind Deshpande, president and CEO, said in a statement.
