Arena Pharmaceuticals Announces First Quarter 2009 Financi...( SAN DIEGO May 11 2009 /- Arena Pharma...)

SAN DIEGO, May 11, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Arena Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARNA) today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009.

Arena reported a net loss allocable to common stockholders in the first quarter of 2009 of $50.6 million, or $0.68 per share, compared to a net loss allocable to common stockholders in the first quarter of 2008 of $55.0 million, or $0.75 per share.

"Receiving the positive lorcaserin BLOOM results was a significant milestone for Arena, and we are focusing our financial, management and development resources on completing the lorcaserin BLOSSOM trial on schedule and submitting our New Drug Application for lorcaserin by the end of the year," stated Jack Lief, Arena's President and Chief Executive Officer. "Given the challenging economic environment, we made the difficult decision to reduce the number of employees and limit our research programs to provide additional financial flexibility for this primary objective."

"As previously announced, during the first year of the BLOOM trial, 47.5% of lorcaserin patients lost 5% or more of their body weight from baseline, compared to 20.3% in the placebo group, exceeding the efficacy benchmark in the most recent FDA draft guidance," stated William R. Shanahan, M.D., Arena's Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. "Patients on lorcaserin rapidly lost a medically important amount of weight in a well-tolerated manner, with about one-third losing at least 5% of their body weight in only eight weeks. Lorcaserin helped nearly half of the patients to lose at least 5% of their body weight, and nearly a quarter to lose 10% or more of their body weight. We look forward to presenting these and additional data at the upcoming American Diabetes Association meeting in June."

As expected, research and deve
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