Spring Bank Pharmaceuticals (SBPH) said Wednesday it was abandoning efforts to develop a drug to treat hepatitis B as a result of “unexpected serious adverse events,” including a patient’s death in a mid-stage clinical trial.
“We are deeply saddened by the death of a patient in our Catalyst 2 trial,” Martin Driscoll, president and chief executive of Spring Bank, said of the clinical trial testing an experimental drug called inarigivir soproxil.
“Because we are guided by an overriding interest in protecting patients, we have made the difficult decision to discontinue the further development of inarigivir for the treatment of HBV at Spring Bank.”
