Arena expects to abandon Ph IIb-stage insomnia drug

The USA's Arena Pharmaceuticals says that its insomnia drug candidate APD125 missed the primary and secondary endpoints in a Phase IIb trial.

Treatment with APD125 was well tolerated, and there were no reports of  serious adverse events and no emerging safety findings compared to  placebo. Arena is finishing a complete analysis of the data, but does  not anticipate developing it further.

"While we are disappointed and anticipated a different result based on  objective polysomnographic results from our previous studies, our  priority remains the successful development of lorcaserin, our  proprietary investigative treatment for obesity. We expect to announce  lorcaserin results from BLOOM, our first pivotal Phase III clinical  trial, around the end of March and to file a New Drug Application for  lorcaserin by the end of 2009," said Jack Lief, Arena's chief  executive.