Tokai Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Tuesday it was ending a clinical trial of an experimental prostate cancer drug that an independent committee concluded “will likely not succeed.’’

The move threw into question the future of Boston-based Tokai, a 12-year-old company with 27 employees. Tokai had about $43.9 million in cash on June 30.

Shares of the company, which raised $97 million in an initial public offering in 2012, fell 79 percent to $1.10. The stock traded as high as $14 last summer.

Tokai chief executive Jodie Morrison declined to discuss the company’s decision to halt its late-stage study of galeterone, its drug candidate to treat patients with an aggressive form of prostate cancer marked by a particular genetic mutation. It was being compared in the study to another drug treating the same disease, metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Speaking on a conference call with stock analysts, Tokai chief medical officer Karen J. Ferrante said the company was following the recommendation of its independent data monitoring committee in discontinuing the clinical trial. That panel concluded the trial wouldn’t meet its primary goal of improving progression-free survival in patients.

Ferrante, however, said executives wouldn’t comment on the trial’s findings until they can study the safety and efficacy data.

“We look forward to interrogating the data,’’ she said. “We certainly want to understand what led to this unexpected outcome.’’

Morrison said in a company statement that Tokai was “very disappointed’’ by the data. The statement said Tokai would “evaluate potential paths forward’’ but gave no details.

Robert Weisman can be reached at robert.weisman@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeRobW.