Sr Associate

Corcept Therapeutics ’ investigational cortisol modulator dazucorilant failed to boost functional performance in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—but the biotech dug into the data Thursday and came away with overall survival benefits.Analysts at Truist Securities called the Phase II readout a “mixed bag” in an investor note on Thursday, adding that aside from the missed primary endpoint, dazucorilant also elicited “increased” gastrointestinal adverse events. “We would have liked to see some QoL [quality of life] assessments to better gauge commercial potential as discontinuation rates” seemed higher in the dazucorilant group versus placebo, they said.Still, Truist considered Thursday’s readout to be only “incremental” to Corcept’s overall stock narrative. The analyst firm does not include dazucorilant in its valuation for the biotech.Thursday’s data, presented at the 2025 annual meeting of the European Network to Cure ALS, showed no statistical separation between dazucorilant and placebo patients in terms of scores on the ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised , a disease-specific severity score that evaluates patients’ disability and respiratory function, among other metrics.However, an exploratory analysis found that dazucorilant treatment significantly improved overall survival. At 24 weeks, five of 82 patients on placebo died, as opposed none of the 83 patients in the dazucorilant arm. At one year, treatment with dazucorilant cut the risk of death by 84% versus placebo. The biotech called this effect “pronounced” in its Thursday release.Given the mixed mid-stage findings, Corcept is currently “working with regulatory authorities” to determine the best path forward for dazucorilant, Bill Guyer, the company’s chief development officer, said in a prepared statement on Thursday.The ALS readout comes after Corcept earlier this week unveiled Phase III data for its selective glucocorticoid receptor antagonist relacorilant, which it combined with nab-paclitaxel to treat patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.The findings, revealed in a late-breaking presentation at the recently concluded 2025 conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, showed that the relacorilant regimen cut the risk of disease progression by 30% versus nab-paclitaxel alone

In a presentation at the European Network to Cure ALS 2025 annual meeting this week, Corcept included a table showing that the decline as measured by a functionality scale was broadly the same across both dazucorilant cohorts and the placebo group over 24 weeks.