Kalshi to allow bets on clinical trials, FDA decisions

July 16 (Reuters) - Prediction market platform Kalshi will start taking bets on the outcomes of clinical trials and FDA regulatory reviews, it said on Thursday, making drug-development odds public for

July 16 (Reuters) - Prediction market platform Kalshi will start taking bets on the outcomes of clinical trials and FDA regulatory reviews, it said on Thursday, making drug-development odds public for the first time. The new markets will be launched in partnership with AppliedXL, which monitors and predicts the outcomes of clinical trials. The markets allow investors to act on a view about a single drug, instead of the entire company, Kalshi said.

People will be able to bet only on the outcomes of late-stage trials as a part of the pilot program. Kalshi and AppliedXL will list a contract only after a trial finishes enrolling. Each contract will be based on details of a named public document — the registered primary endpoint on ClinicalTrials.gov, the FDA approval letter or the voting record of the agency's advisory committee.

AppliedXL will define the criteria for reading that document before the contract opens for trading, not after results arrive. Contracts available at launch include more than a dozen U.S. Food and Drug Administration decisions, including whether it will approve Gilead's experimental cancer drug, anito-cel, and Summit Therapeutics' experimental lung cancer drug, ivonescimab. Other bets include if an early Alzheimer's disease drug being developed by AriBio will meet the main goals of a late-stage trial.

The platform will require employment verification for all traders and prohibit trading by anyone who holds material nonpublic information. Launched in 2021, Kalshi allows people to bet on events such as sports, election outcomes and weather. (Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)