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Amgen and Cytokinetics Stock Slide After Heart Drug Trial Results -- Barrons.com Amgen and Cytokinetics Stock Slide After Heart Drug Trial Results -- Barrons.com Dow Jones By Bill Alpert The pivotal trial of a heart failure drug achieved its endpoint with statistical significance, said the developers of the novel treatment, Amgen and Cytokinetics. But the Thursday morning announcement still sent their stocks sliding, with Amgen (ticker: AMGN) falling 7% to $241 and Cytokinetics (CYTK) tumbling 43% to $15.70, by midafternoon. Troubling investors was the terribly small medical significance shown in the trial. The drug omecamtiv mecarbil only provided an 8% reduction in a composite measure of heart-related deaths or heart failure events. Measuring deaths alone, the drug made no statistically significant difference. That makes some analyst wonder if many doctors will think it is worth using the treatment, if it gets approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Cytokinetics shares had gotten a big boost just Monday, when investors were excited by the $13 billion buyout of a rival developer of heart drugs, MyoKardia (MYOK) by Bristol Myers Squibb (BMY). Some analysts even wondered if Amgen would make a bid for Cytokinetics. Raymond James analyst Dane Leone slashed his commercial expectations for the drug, saying in a Thursday note that he now projects 2025 year sales of $677 million, instead of his previous forecast for $2.6 billion. Details on the heart failure study will come out at a November 13 meeting of the American Heart Association, and Leone still thinks there is a chance the drug may have provided greater clinical benefits in some subset of heart failure patients. He's still betting on a couple of other heart drugs that Amgen and Cytokinetics have in earlier phase trials. But he is taking down his rating on Cytokinetics stock to an Outperform from a Strong Buy, while cutting his price target to $24 from $39. That is four times the sales that Leon forecasts for 2025. |
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