EyePoint Shares Fall Below $1 as Second Duravyu Trial Fails
The wet AMD program is dead and 53% of staff are gone. The diabetic eye disease readout in late 2027 is what's left.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
EyePoint shares fell more than 80% premarket to about $0.55 after Duravyu failed its second wet AMD trial and the company cut 53% of its workforce.
A second failure ends the wet AMD program
EyePoint (EYPT) shares fell 81.6% in premarket trade Monday to $0.551 after Duravyu missed its primary endpoint in LUCIA, the second pivotal Phase 3 trial in wet age-related macular degeneration. The drop is on pace to be the largest single-day percentage decline in the company's history. Nasdaq halted trading early in the session pending the release.
LUCIA failed to show statistical non-inferiority against aflibercept, the Regeneron drug sold as Eylea. That mirrors the August result from LUGANO, the first pivotal trial, which also missed. Two misses leave no path to an application in wet AMD.
Restructuring cuts more than half the staff
EyePoint paired the data with a restructuring. The company will cut about 53% of its workforce and end both wet AMD trials before their second year is complete. It expects roughly $30 million in annualized savings against about $9 million in one-time separation charges.
Most of the cuts land in the fourth quarter of 2026, with the rest finished in the first half of 2027. The company has said it will put its remaining resources into one program.
The August setup that no longer holds
Shares traded near $15 before LUGANO in August and dropped about 70% on that first miss, to roughly $4.28. Management blamed the result on nine of 211 patients who lost vision for reasons it said were unrelated to wet AMD. Excluding that group, Duravyu cleared non-inferiority in an ad hoc analysis.
The market bought part of that argument. Citi cut its price target to $17 from $35 and kept a Buy rating, trimming its probability of success for wet AMD to 40%. Mizuho called the secondary data excellent. Analysts also flagged what a second miss would mean for the thesis.
LUCIA delivered it. Shares now sit more than 90% below where they traded before August.
Where the hope sits: diabetic macular edema
The case for holding is the diabetic macular edema (DME) program. The Phase 3 COMO and CAPRI trials enrolled 551 patients, randomized to Duravyu 2.7 mg every six months or aflibercept every eight weeks. Topline data is due in the fourth quarter of 2027.
The primary endpoint is the same non-inferiority test on vision change at Weeks 52 and 56 that Duravyu failed twice in wet AMD. Duravyu did show a 42% reduction in treatment burden in LUGANO, and a large share of patients needed no supplemental injections. The company is betting that durability carries more weight in DME. That is a thesis, not a result.
A sub-$1 price also brings Nasdaq's minimum bid requirement into play. A sustained stretch below $1 triggers a deficiency notice and a compliance window.
What to watch
The first read is how shares trade once the halt lifts and whether the premarket price holds. Watch for any Nasdaq notice in the coming weeks, plus the cash runway figure when EyePoint reports third quarter results. The next hard data point is the DME readout in the fourth quarter of 2027.