Vital Therapies Inc. (NASDAQ: VTL) shares were absolutely crushed on Wednesday after the company announced less-than-favorable results for its liver failure trial.

Specifically, the company announced that, while there was a numerical improvement in survival in the ELAD-treated group between three months and one year following randomization, the VTL-308 study failed to meet the primary endpoint of a significant improvement in overall survival through at least 91 days assessed using the Kaplan Meier statistical method. The secondary endpoint of proportion of survivors at study day 91 also showed no statistically significant difference between the groups.

As a result, the company does not believe the ELAD System can be approved in the United States or European Union, if ever, without additional clinical trials that would require substantial capital and time to complete. Consequently, Vital Therapies will cease any further development of the ELAD System and explore strategic options.

CEO Russell J. Cox commented:

Although we did not achieve the outcome we were hoping for, we would like to thank those who made this trial possible, including our investigators and their staffs, the patients who were enrolled and their families, and all Vital Therapies employees.

Shares of Vital Therapies were last seen down about 90% at $0.65, with a consensus analyst price target of $16.00 and a 52-week trading range of $0.50 to $9.75.

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