Xoma Shares Hit By Bad News On Pipeline Drugs

Xoma shares fell 25% on April 24, the day it announced its financialresults for first-quarter 1997 (see page 7), on the news that it was discontinuing trials of its therapy for Gram-negative sepsis, E5, and was having to hold back its trials program for hu1124, an anti-CD11a monoclonal antibody it is developing in collaboration with Genentech.

Xoma and partner Pfizer said they had completed an interim analysis on data from 1,000 patients in their E5 trial, and had decided not to continue. There were no safety concerns, but although a benefit was shown "the results did not meet the predetermined efficacy criteria deemed necessary to continue the trial."

"We believe we have given E5 adequate opportunity to demonstrate its efficacy in three Gram-negative sepsis trials," said Jack Costello, president and chief executive of Xoma. "Although we saw a benefit, given the all-cause mortality endpoint required for sepsis, the results were not positive enough to justify completing the trial," he added.