<p>AtheroGenics Inc. said a heart disease drug it is developing did not meet its primary goal in a large, late-stage clinical trial _ news that sent its stock plummeting.</p><p>AtheroGenics' shares dropped 60 percent in trading Monday. Shares of AstraZeneca PLC, which is working with AtheroGenics on the drug's development, fell also.</p><p>But company officials said the drug did well by other measures, and they still plan to bring it to market.</p><p>"We look forward to developing this drug, which we think is an important one, for any number of therapeutic indications," said the company's chief executive, Dr. Russell Medford, AtheroGenics' chief executive and co-founder.</p><p>The aim of the study was to compare AtheroGenics' AGI-1067 drug to placebo in more than 6,000 patients with heart disease who were also being treated with standard care. The study focused on a composite measure of occurrence of six conditions _ heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular death, resuscitated cardiac arrest, coronary revascularization and hospitalization for chest pain.</p><p>"We didn't show a difference" against the placebo, Medford said.</p><p>But the drug did better than the placebo in a smaller grouping of three measurements _ cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke. AGI-1067 also showed signs of doing well against diabetes, he said.</p><p>However, Medford would not detail how much better or worse the experimental drug performed. He said those specifics will be released at an American College of Cardiology meeting in New Orleans on March 27.</p><p>Company officials did say the study showed that diarrhea symptoms were the most common side effect.</p><p>Review of the data is continuing, he added. Once that's done, AstraZeneca has 45 days to decide whether to continue the collaboration, Medford said.</p><p>AtheroGenics plans to pursue the drug's development alone, if necessary, he added.</p><p>AtheroGenics was founded in 1993 and went public in 2000. The Alpharetta, Ga.-based company has about 130 employees but no products currently on the market.</p><p>Two of its drugs are at the point of being tested in clinical trials with patients _ AGI-1067, for fighting heart disease; and AGI-1096, for preventing organ transplant rejection.</p><p>AtheroGenics officials have had high hopes for AGI-1067, which they say takes a different approach than other medications that fight atherosclerosis by trying to lower cholesterol, control high blood pressure or prevent clotting.</p><p>AGI-1067 acts by controlling inflammation in the lining of blood vessels where heart-endangering plaque build-up occurs.</p><p>"Clearly, people want more approaches, and there's a bunch of attempts to get there _ so far without a lot of success," said Will Mitchell, a professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, who has studied the pharmaceutical industry for about twenty years.</p><p>"But you have to commend the firms for going through it, and the expectation is that sooner or later, somebody's going to hit something," he added.</p><p>AtheroGenics stock dropped $4.74, or 60.5 percent, to close at $3.09 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, with volume topping 14 times normal daily trade. Shares traded as low as $2.90, compared with their previous range between $7.23 and $16.76 in the past year.</p><p>American shares of London-based AstraZeneca closed down 2 cents to $55.48 on the New York Stock Exchange.</p>
