Marinus Hammered As Its Phase II Post-Partum Depression Studies Come Up Short

Marinus (MRNS) has been a controversial stock for some time, as the company looked to challenge Sage’s (SAGE) Zulresso with its “similar but different” compound ganaxolone, and questions about the efficacy of the drug and its chronic clinical timeline slips dogged the stock. Writing about the shares in late September of 2018, I very nearly top-ticked the stock and the shares declined sharply into the end of 2018 on growing doubts about both the post-partum and epilepsy pipelines before recovering into the mid-single-digits through April of this year.

With Phase II data in hand, the market certainly thinks that Marinus has little-to-no chance of seriously challenging Sage, and looking at the data I’m forced to concur. Maybe there’s a path here for the IV-only form of ganaxolone in severe PPD patients, but I think it will be a very steep climb to get any traction on Sage, particularly with the Phase III results of Sage’s oral drug SAGE-217, and I think the oral-only approach is likewise a non-starter.

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Marinus Hammered As Its Phase II Post-Partum Depression Studies Come Up Short