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Cephalon Inc. (NASDAQ: CEPH) is down sharply on news that it and privately-held Ception Therapeutics, Inc. did not meet some endpoints.  Cephalon was halted, but shares are down 7.6% at $55.07 on 662,000 shares as of 8:40 AM EST.  After shares were re-opened, the stock was down over 9%.  Average volume is 1.9 million shares and the 52-week trading range is $52.55 to $81.35.  This is the brief summary: The companies gave Phase IIb/III clinical trial data for CINQUIL(TM) (reslizumab) as a treatment for pediatric eosinophilic esophagitis.  Analysis of the data indicated that patients treated with CINQUIL showed a statistically significant reduction in esophageal eosinophil levels versus placebo. In the second co-primary endpoint, patients treated with CINQUIL showed an improvement in their clinical symptoms; however, placebo treated patients also experienced an unexpectedly large improvement in their symptoms. Therefore, the study did not achieve statistical significance for this endpoint. CINQUIL was well tolerated in the study, with an adverse event profile comparable to placebo. Ception and Cephalon continue to fully analyze the data and are planning to perform an analysis of an ongoing open-label extension study to help further assess the clinical results.

JON OGG