New setback for British Biotech in drugs trials British Biotech Andrew Clark Saturday June 24, 2000 The Guardian British Biotech, the embattled drug development company, suffered a fresh setback yesterday when its cancer drug marimastat failed in a fourth successive clinical trial. The drug, which was once tipped as a revolutionary cure for all types of cancer, showed little benefit over a placebo in a study involving 160 patients with terminal brain tumours. British Biotech's shares slumped 5p to 19.25p - their lowest point for nearly a year. Finance director Tony Weir said: "It's disappointing for both us and the patients. Marimastat did perform better than the placebo, but the difference wasn't statistically significant." Marimastat is supposed to surround malignant tumours and cut off the blood supply to them, making them shrink and eventually disappear. However, it has failed to work in a series of trials on gastric and pancreatic cancer. Mr Weir said the company was still hopeful marimastat could work in a study to report later this year on patients with small-cell lung cancer - tumours in these cases tend to be much smaller: "If marimastat is going to give us a positive result, it will be in that study." However, he admitted there was a significant possibility that the drug would never reach the market. In the trial results revealed yesterday, 90% of the patients taking a placebo died, against a slightly smaller proportion of deaths on marimastat. However, the difference between the death rates needed to be 17.5% to be statistically significant - a hurdle which the drug did not cross. Analysts were not surprised by yesterday's news. Erling Refsum of Nomura said he believed the value of marimastat was equivalent to just 2p a share for British Biotech. The company's prospects now depend on the progress of other drugs in its development portfolio. These include a follow-up to marimastat called BB-3644, a product for heart disease, and on several antibiotics. However, there are fears that British Biotech's poor reputation is handicapping its efforts to license in further products. A dissident scientist, Andrew Millar, caused a collapse in the group's shares two years ago by predicting the demise of several key drugs - predictions which have turned out to be accurate. (c) Copyright Guardian Media Group plc. 2000