Alk­er­mes claims a suc­cess in PhI­II schiz­o­phre­nia head-to-head, but where’s the ben­e­fit for pa­tients?

Alk­er­mes $ALKS has one shot at mak­ing ALKS-3831 a stand­out in the schiz­o­phre­nia field. For years now, in­ves­ti­ga­tors ex­pect­ed to be able to show that the drug per­forms pret­ty much the same as the gener­ic olan­za­p­ine in terms of ef­fi­ca­cy, but sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter in terms of pre­vent­ing the weight gain — and all the risks that come with it — that af­flicts pa­tients on the old drug.

But in the first of two Phase III read­outs on Thurs­day evening, in­ves­ti­ga­tors were on­ly able to point to a sim­i­lar ef­fi­ca­cy with olan­za­p­ine with­out the ben­e­fit on weight gain.

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