Mas­ter deal­mak­er? Medi­va­tion CEO David Hung’s overzeal­ous PARP as­sault falls flat

Medi­va­tion doesn’t look any fur­ther ahead now that the CEO is pub­licly de­fend­ing the as­set like a dog de­fends a bone

Back when David Hung was build­ing Medi­va­tion as a pipeline com­pa­ny, he per­suad­ed Pfiz­er to fork over $225 mil­lion as an up­front to part­ner on dime­bon, a Russ­ian an­ti­his­t­a­mine that had shown some ac­tiv­i­ty for Alzheimer’s in ear­ly stud­ies. Dime­bon went on to be­come an em­bar­rass­ing fi­as­co, fail­ing two ex­pen­sive Phase III stud­ies. And I can re­call Hung dis­count­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the pro­gram to his com­pa­ny when he was be­tween late-stage flops. Af­ter all, he told me, Pfiz­er had paid for that work al­ready.

This article is for premium subscribers only

Upgrade to a premium subscription plan for unlimited access, and join our community of key biopharma players.

UPGRADE