Oral salmon calcitonin: Preliminary Phase III data

Emisphere said that Novartis reported preliminary data from the 2-year, double-blind, international Phase III Study 2301 trial in up to 1,150 patients showing that 0.8 mg twice-daily oral SMC021 missed the co-primary endpoint of significantly improving joint space width in the medial tibio-femoral knee joint vs. placebo. Novartis did say that SMC021 showed indications of "clinical efficacy" on the 2 other co-primary endpoints - pain and functional disability as measured by WOMAC scores. According to Emisphere, Novartis and development partner Nordic Bioscience plan to further analyze the results. ...