01-07-2025
A Drug-Trial Stock Sale
Here's a weird little trade, first reported by Adam Feuerstein of StatNews. INmune Bio Inc. is a biotechnology company working on treatments for cancer and Alzheimer's Disease. It recently conducted a Phase 2 trial of an Alzheimer's drug called XPro. It ... didn't work, is the short summary (' showing no effects in the modified intent-to-treat population'), though there is some good news ('predefined analyses demonstrated a cognitive benefit for XPro over placebo on the primary endpoint'), and I do not want to give you any investing or medical advice. But INmune got these results last week, and it seems safe to say they were not what it was hoping for.
As a small biotech company, INmune is not exactly awash in cash. As of March, it had about $19 million of cash and was spending about $3 million a month. A little more money might be nice, and for a small biotech company the way to get a little more money is to sell stock. Ideally the way to do this would be (1) get good trial results, (2) announce those results, (3) stock goes up, (4) sell stock into that demand. That option was not available, because the trial results were bad.