Vanda Pharmaceuticals stock falls after anxiety drug trial fails

Vanda Pharmaceuticals' stock plummeted 6.2% following Wednesday's announcement that its anxiety medication VQW-765 failed to meet its primary objective in a Phase III trial. The trial assessed VQW-765's effectiveness in treating on-demand acute anxiety in adults with social anxiety disorder. With 546 participants across approximately 30 U.S. clinical sites, the study compared VQW-765 to a placebo using the Trier Social Stress Test.

Unfortunately, the drug showed no statistically significant difference in distress levels compared to placebo, with a p-value of 0.8899. Additionally, the drug failed to meet its key secondary endpoint among the combined male and female population, with a p-value of 0.6605. This outcome contradicts Vanda's earlier positive results from a Phase II trial, where participants with performance anxiety reported lower stress levels when taking VQW-765 compared to placebo.

Mihael H. Polymeropoulos, Vanda's President, CEO, and Chairman, expressed disappointment, stating that the study did not validate the earlier Phase II findings. The company maintains that VQW-765 is safe and well-tolerated, as demonstrated in previous studies. Consequently, the VQW-765 program has been placed on hold while a thorough analysis of the full dataset is conducted.