Shorts Left to Scramble as BioCryst Announces Positive Mid-Stage Trial Results

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals

said Wednesday that its experimental gout drug BCX4208 has been meeting its main goal in clinical trials testing their drug in patients who have not been helped by an older gout treatment. When BioCryst closed at $2.62 on Tuesday there were over 4 million shares short in the stock. Apparently, someone was not anticipating things would go well, but company management scheduled a call bright and early to share the good news with investors and to go over the positive study results as well as to provide a clinical overview and update for the BCX4208 program. At the start of today's trading, BCRX shares were available -55.29 % below their 52-Wk High of $ 5.86 and even as this morning's positive results had shares were headed to the $3 level, some on the short side of the stock were left scrambling to find ways to steal the thunder away from the affirmative clinical trials news. The potential for heavy covering by the shorts on this positive news development still exists despite late efforts to bash the science and manipulate the stock in the other direction. It will be interesting to see if the bulls are able to keep the pressure on those bears and force them to cover despite the obsfucation. The mid-stage trial compared four different doses of BCX4208 to placebo. Patients received one dose of the drug or the placebo every day for 12 weeks, and all patients were treated with allopurinol, the standard treatment for gout. However, those patients had not reached treatment goals on allopurinol in the past. Gout is a painful and debilitating disease caused by abnormally elevated levels of uric acid in the bloodstream. Its symptoms including swelling and pain in joints. Treatments for gout are designed to reduce uric acid levels, and patients in the study had not met a target uric acid level while being treated with allopurinol alone. The company said 45 percent of the patients on the 5-milligram dose reached that level, and so did 39 percent of the patients on the 20-milligram dose and 49 percent of the patients who took the 40-milligram dose. BioCryst said 33 percent of the patients in the 10-milligram dose group reached the target, which was not significantly better than the placebo group, where 18 percent of patients improved. The company enrolled a total of 279 patients in the trial. A total of 10 patients left the trial because of a decrease in a type of T cell. Eight of them were in the 40-milligram dose group and two were in the 20-milligram dose group. “These positive results in 2nd line treatment are consistent with findings from our prior 1st line combination study, and reinforce BCX4208's potential to safely address the unmet medical need for new treatment options that help gout patients reach their therapeutic goal,” said Dr. William P. Sheridan, Senior Vice President & Chief Medical Officer of BioCryst Pharmaceuticals. “We expect to report 6-month results from the ongoing extension study in early 2012, which will provide additional insight into BCX4208's safety and efficacy profile. We are on track to conclude this Phase 2 program during the first half of next year and we look forward to discussing the results in more detail with regulatory authorities and potential partners.” The BioCryst conference call and some highly technical information about the mid-stage trial results, can be accessed via BioCryst's website at: http://investor.shareholder.com/biocryst/events.cfm