OBI Pharma Inc (台灣浩鼎) shares plunged yesterday after a story by the Chinese-language Next Magazine rekindled controversies about the biotechnology firm’s clinical trial setbacks and insider trading.
The stock fell 4.34 percent to NT$397 on the Taipei Exchange, reaching its lowest closing price since May.
The report suggested that progress on OBI-822 — the company’s breast cancer drug — had fallen short of expectations.
The report said that in anticipation of unfavorable results from the clinical trial, OBI had consulted five experts from Taiwan’s medical sector during a meeting on Aug. 28 last year, and decided to wrap up the study and “unblind” the study data ahead of schedule.
The company also changed the metrics for data interpretation from central reading to local reading so that the drug might appear to be more effective, the report said.
In February, the company released OBI-822’s clinical trial results and said that the outcome showed “no statistical significance.”
Since then, the company’s share price has swung wildly, with authorities looking into allegations of market manipulation and other contraventions.
Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁), who holds a doctorate in human genetics and was one of the five people the company consulted, was questioned by investigators as a witness in May.
Investigators have decrypted tens of thousands of e-mails between former Academia Sinica president Wong Chi-huey (翁啟惠), who had collaborated in the development of OBI-822, and OBI Pharma chairman Michael Chang (張念慈), the report said.
The e-mails showed that Wong held and traded OBI Pharma shares and had on numerous occasions sought research funds and cash to purchase company shares from Chang, the report said.
The report suggests that Wong contradicted his claims that he was not financially involved with OBI Pharma.
Chen’s office said he was called in as a witness to answer questions related to a case against Chang’s alleged violation of the Securities and Exchange Act (證券交易法), and that the report’s claims about the meeting with OBI Pharma were false.
OBI Pharma said that Chang had donated US$300,000 for a Scripps Research Institute laboratory, where Wong is a professor of chemistry specializing in glycoscience, and that the transfer of funds had nothing to do with the personal relationship between Wong and Chang.
It added that the five experts it consulted are not financially involved with the company.
The company said it is not uncommon for a drug developer to change clinical data methodologies, as seen in many precedents in Taiwan and in the US.
The company’s chief medical officer Nathan Chen (陳純誠), who had overseen the clinical trials, resigned on Aug. 11.
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