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It took Anavex Life Sciences seven months to finally acknowledge the failure of a late-stage clinical trial in Rett syndrome.

The negative study outcome was never in doubt, so the only surprise from Tuesday’s announcement was the company’s lame attempt at damage control. Anavex is a serial dissembler of clinical trial results, so I was expecting better spin. Instead, management barely tried, which tells you the real results from the Rett study must be truly awful.

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Anavex shares fell 31% to $6 in early trading. The company’s only drug in clinical development, called blarcamesine, is a zero. Rett is the latest failure, following earlier study failures in Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Yet even with Tuesday’s drop in share price, Anavex still carries a fully diluted market value of nearly $650 million.

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