HIV Protection Trial Halted Due to Increase Risk of…HIV!

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 1, 4:10AM EST

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by H.S. Ayoub
BioHealth Investor.com

Shares of Canadian firm Polydex Pharmaceuticals (POLYXF) absolutely sank more than 50% on Wednesday as the company announced that phase III trials of Ushercell, a topical microbicide gel for the prevention of HIV infections in women, were halted internationally.

CONRAD, a reproductive health research organization dedicated to the prevention of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases in women and men, halted the trials of Ushercell in South Africa, Benin, Uganda, and India, after women taking part in the late stage trials exhibited an increased risk of HIV infection compared to the placebo group. Family Health International also halted a phase III trial of Ushercell in Nigeria following the preliminary data presented by the CONRAD trials.

This came as a surpise to Polydex officials as numerous earlier trials showed strong and positive data. Ushercell, which is a Cellulose Sulfate based topical gel, had consistently shown strong safety data through 11 trials and 500 total participants. The earlier trials mostly tested the gel’s safety profile and contraceptive potential however.

President and CEO George Usher declared that Polydex will continue to investigate Ushercell’s contraceptive potential, and will work together with CONRAD to determine the cause of the high incidence of HIV infection in the trials.

Polydex stock ended regular hours trading at $3 a share, down 55%. Shares dropped a further 14% to $2.59 in after-hours trading.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.