That is what happened to AstraZeneca (AZN) on July 9<\/strong>. One setback wiped out more market value than the stock had lost on any day in years.<\/p>\n For investors, the loss was alarming. But the reason behind the loss was even more concerning.\u00a0<\/p>\n Wall Street had been counting on this drug to become a major seller<\/strong>, and that trial failure took those hopes off the table in one afternoon.<\/p>\n AstraZeneca shares fell after the company said its experimental heart drug Wainua failed<\/strong> the main goal of a late-stage trial<\/strong>, Reuters reported.\u00a0<\/p>\n The London-listed stock closed down about 7.7%<\/strong>, its worst single day since March 2020<\/strong> and the biggest drop on the FTSE 100<\/strong> on Thursday, July 9.<\/p>\n More Health Care Stocks:<\/strong><\/p>\n At its lowest point of the day, the drugmaker had shed roughly \u00a319 billion<\/strong> (about $27 billion) in market value<\/strong>, according to Reuters’ report.\u00a0<\/p>\n The drop stands out because AstraZeneca is usually one of Europe’s steadier large-cap names<\/strong>, not a stock that swings like a small company.<\/p>\n Robert Way / Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Wainua<\/strong>, known generically as eplontersen<\/strong>, is a gene-silencing drug<\/strong> that AstraZeneca co-developed<\/strong> with Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS), Reuters reports.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Phase III trial<\/strong> tested it in a heart condition called ATTR-CM<\/strong>, where a faulty protein builds up in the heart and makes it harder to pump blood.<\/p>\n The study, called CARDIO-TTRansform<\/strong>, did not meet its primary goal.\u00a0<\/p>\n Adding Wainua to standard care did not significantly cut cardiovascular deaths<\/strong> and repeat heart events<\/strong> over 140 weeks<\/strong> compared with a placebo.<\/p>\n Analysts pointed to the trial setup. About 57% of the 1,432 patients<\/strong> were already on a stabilizer drug<\/strong> at enrollment, and roughly another quarter<\/strong> added one during the study.<\/p>\n Because Wainua works by lowering the faulty protein rather than stabilizing it, that overlap made it hard to isolate the drug’s added benefit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Related: Eli Lilly\u2019s hottest drugs face a quiet new threat<\/strong><\/p>\n In patients taking Wainua alone<\/strong>, the company said the result looked better<\/strong>, though that subgroup cannot rescue a missed main goal.<\/p>\n The failure did not affect only AstraZeneca. Ionis shares fell about 21%<\/strong>, while companies with approved treatments<\/strong> for the same disease climbed, PharmExec reported.<\/p>\n BridgeBio <\/strong>(BBIO) and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals<\/strong> (ALNY), which already sell ATTR-CM drugs<\/strong>, rose between 6% and 16%<\/strong> as investors saw a less crowded market ahead.<\/p>\n The setback reduced prospects for a drug that analysts had estimated could reach about $2 billion<\/strong> in peak annual sales<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The failure removed those expected future sales from valuation models, which is a big part of why the stock fell so hard.<\/p>\n The lost revenue alone does not fully explain a move this size. The deeper issue was confidence.<\/p>\n BofA analyst Sachin Jain said the miss came as a surprise<\/strong>, noting that he and other investors had not even debated the odds of a primary endpoint failure<\/strong> given the positive earlier data, PharmExec noted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Jefferies<\/strong> analysts <\/p>\n called the trial design a possible credibility problem<\/strong> for a management team known for getting trials right.<\/p>\n For a company that investors treat as a gold standard<\/strong> on trial design, a surprise failure affects trust in future readouts, even ones in unrelated areas.<\/p>\n The setback is real, but it does not erase the rest of AstraZeneca’s business. A few things are worth tracking:<\/p>\n No single trial defines a company this large, yet a surprise failure is a reminder that even strong drugmakers can fail in drug development.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anyone weighing the stock should size any position to their own risk tolerance and wait for more data before deciding whether the selloff was an overreaction or a warning.<\/p>\n Related: Lilly quietly hands Chinese partner its cancer drug<\/strong><\/p>\n #AstraZeneca #erases #billions #sobering #reveal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drug trials fail all the time. What is rare is a failure that costs a company tens of billions of dollars in a single afternoon. That is what happened to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[13200,1252,13201,5042,6077],"class_list":["post-11760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular","tag-astrazeneca","tag-billions","tag-erases","tag-reveal","tag-sobering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What AstraZeneca’s trial failure means for the stock<\/h2>\n
\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/.image\/NDA6MDAwMDAwMDAzMTA5Nzg3\/astrazenecacompany_pl_100726.jpg?profile=rss\")
Why the Wainua heart trial disappointed investors<\/h2>\n
How the trial design blurred the result<\/h3>\n
How rivals and Ionis partners reacted to the news<\/h2>\n
Why the AstraZeneca selloff was bigger than one drug<\/h2>\n
What AstraZeneca investors should watch next<\/h2>\n
Key signals for AstraZeneca stock from here<\/h3>\n
\n