A Phase III Failure at Eli Lilly. Yes, Again.

In case you didn't see it yesterday, Eli Lilly had yet another nasty Phase III failure. This one was ramucirumab against breast cancer (one of the Imclone projects). This was (yet again) one of the compounds that's supposed to be shoring the company up as it continues to lose patent protection on its existing drugs, and it's losing a lot of that. I'm not going to focus on this particular antibody, but rather a larger issue. Here it is, outlined by FierceBiotech: The crucial late-stage failure--ramucirumab has been considered one of the pharma giant's top Phase III prospects--scuttles one of Eli Lilly's chief near-term hopes for a major new drug approval application. The failure also follows several years of poor trial outcomes for Lilly, which has a reputation for taking expensive and very risky chances when it comes to late-stage development. Its shares ($LLY) immediately dropped more than 5% on the news. Lilly does indeed have that reputation - you'll get one if you spend as much time on big Alzheimer's projects as they have, among other things. And here's my question: are they doing things wrong over there, or doing them right? I mean, we in the drug business catch a lot of flak (often, but not always, undeservedly) for ducking the really big challenges in favor of grabbing market share from each other's established drugs. Those really big challenges, though, come with really high failure rates, and it's not like the failure rates for even the supposedly easy stuff are...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs