Why AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AVEO) Fell

AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO)Although we don’t believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes — just in case they’re material to our investing thesis.

What: Shares of AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO), a cancer therapeutics company, collapsed as much as 27% following the release of briefing documents today in anticipation of AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO)’s meeting with the Food and Drug Administration panel on Thursday.

So what: If you recall, one of the oddities of AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO)’s Tivozanib, an oral metastatic renal cell carcinoma drug, is that it outperformed Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:ONXX)‘ Nexavar in terms of progression-free survival in trials (11.9 months versus 9.1 months), but actually delivered a slightly lower median overall survival than Nexavar (28.8 months versus 29.3 months). According to the briefing docs released this morning, it appears that the FDA may want AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO) to run an additional trial to confirm the added benefit of Tivozanib based on that reduction in overall median survival noted during the study.

However, AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO) CEO William Slichenmyer noted that when Nexavar-arm patients failed to respond or got sicker in trials, they were switched to Tivozanib, creating a sort of sequential instead of direct comparison late in the game. That could help explain the flip-flopped median overall survival figures.

Now what: Confused yet? We’ll know more after AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVEO) meets with the FDA panel on Thursday. Safety doesn’t seem to be a big issue here, but AVEO is going to need to convince the panel that another trial isn’t needed if it has any hope of getting this drug to market within the next two years. Tivozanib clearly shows promise; but just how much promise remains to be seen.

The article Why AVEO Pharmaceuticals Shares Imploded originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Sean Williams.

Fool contributor Sean Williams has no material interest in any companies mentioned in this article. You can follow him on CAPS under the screen name TMFUltraLong, track every pick he makes under the screen name TrackUltraLong, and check him out on Twitter, where he goes by the handle @TMFUltraLong.

Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.