More bad news for Acorda

US drug developer Acorda Therapeutics (Nasdaq: ACOR) watched its shares slide as much as 13% yesterday, having fallen by over 50% year-to-date, after it revealed another clinical development disappointment, this time with its stroke drug candidate.

Acorda announced that the MILESTONE clinical study did not show sufficient efficacy to support further development of dalfampridine to improve post-stroke walking difficulties (PSWD). As part of the PSWD development program, a multi-dose pharmacokinetic (PK) study confirmed the company has developed a potentially viable once-daily (QD) formulation of dalfampridine.

“We are disappointed by this outcome. The study indicated there was activity related to walking in people with PSWD, as suggested by the prior Phase II study, but overall this was not sufficiently clinically meaningful,” said Ron Cohen, president and chief executive of Acorda. “This outcome underscores the risks that companies in the biopharmaceutical industry must take in order to develop innovative medicines. Over the past three years, we have successfully diversified our pipeline portfolio to account for this risk. We plan to focus R&D resources on developing our promising late-stage Parkinson’s disease therapies, CVT-301 and tozadenant, as well as advancing our earlier stage assets, CVT-427 in migraine, SYN120 in Parkinson’s disease dementia, and rHIgM22 in MS,” he added.