Pomerantz Appointed Co-Lead Counsel in Odonate Therapeutics Securities Litigation
On December 14, 2020, U.S. District Judge Marilyn L. Huff of the Southern District of California appointed Pomerantz LLP as Co-Lead Counsel on behalf of Lead Plaintiff Kevin Kendall in Kendall v. Odonate Therapeutics, Inc., 20-cv-1828 (S.D. Cal.), a securities litigation being pursued on behalf of a class of defrauded investors concerning allegations that Odonate Therapeutics, Inc. (“Odonate” or the “Company”) had misrepresented the safety and commercial viability of one of its cancer treatments.
Odonate is a pharmaceutical company that develops therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, including tesetaxel, an orally administered chemotherapy agent.
The complaint alleges that, between December 7, 2017 and August 21, 2020, the defendants issued materially false and misleading statements and failed to disclose that: (i) tesetaxel was not as safe or well-tolerated as the Company had led investors to believe; (ii) consequently, tesetaxel’s commercial viability as a cancer treatment was overstated; and (iii) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
On December 7, 2017, Odonate began publicly trading pursuant to false or misleading statements or omissions contained in the Registration Statement that it filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). In the Registration Statement, the Company touted tesetaxel’s safety and tolerability profile, stating that the treatment “has been generally well tolerated in clinical studies.” Specifically, Odonate was evaluating tesetaxel in combination with capecitabine (a chemotherapy agent) in a Phase 3 clinical study for patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer (the “CONTESSA trial”).
In annual reports filed with the SEC on February 14, 2018, February 22, 2019 and February 20, 2020, Odonate included substantively the same statements featured in the Registration Statement that touted tesetaxel as “well tolerated” in the CONTESSA trial.
The truth emerged on August 24, 2020 when Odonate issued a press release announcing top-line results from the CONTESSA trial as it met its primary endpoint, revealing that tesetaxel, in combination with capecitabine, was far less effective and less tolerated than capecitabine alone. In example, higher levels of neutropenia (abnormally low levels of white blood cells) occurred in 71.2% of patients undergoing the tesetaxel-capecitabine combination treatment versus 8.3% for the capecitabine treatment alone. On this news, Odonate’s share price fell $15.21 per share, or 45.35%, to close at $18.33 per share on August 24, 2020.
The deadline to move as lead plaintiff is set for November 16, 2020.