AstraZeneca Axes Pneumonia Drug Pact With Aridis

AstraZeneca plc AZN scrapped its license agreement with Aridis Pharmaceuticals Inc ARDS.
With the license terminated for AR-320 (suvratoxumab), the ongoing AR-320-003 Phase 3 clinical study must be put on hold, the company said in an SEC filing.
The SAATELLITE-2 trial enrolled the first patient in September 2022, and was expected to enroll 564 intubated and ventilated patients.
The companies entered the agreement in July 2021, under which Aridis said it would make an upfront payment of $11 million to AstraZeneca and dish out up to $115 million more for development and sales milestones tiered royalties on any potential product sales.
The trial was partly funded by the European Commission's Innovative Medicines Initiative, which contributed up to €25 million to the study.
In January, Aridis' other late-stage study, AR-301-002 Phase 3 study of AR-301 combined with antibiotics, failed to meet the primary endpoint of increasing the clinical cure rate at day 21 compared to antibiotics alone.
The clinical cure rate at day 21 was 68.9% for AR-301 plus antibiotics versus 57.6% with antibiotics alone. There was an 11.3% difference between the arms. The result was not statistically significant (p=0.23).
Price Action: ARDS shares are down 0.97% at $0.39 on the last check Wednesday.