Am­gen, No­var­tis scrap Alzheimer's stud­ies — is BACE fi­nal­ly dead or will Bio­gen and Ei­sai car­ry on?

The BACE the­o­ry of con­trol­ling Alzheimer’s died with failed piv­otal projects at Mer­ck, Eli Lil­ly and their part­ners at As­traZeneca. Now Am­gen and No­var­tis have come along to bull­doze it un­der a mound of safe­ty threats — leav­ing on­ly Bio­gen and Ei­sai to car­ry on with a less than ze­ro chance of suc­cess — with the no­table ad­di­tion that they may ac­tu­al­ly be do­ing harm to pa­tients.

Af­ter the mar­ket closed Thurs­day, Am­gen and No­var­tis an­nounced that they were dump­ing two piv­otal pro­grams un­der­way with the Ban­ner Alzheimer’s In­sti­tute on their BACE drug CNP520 (umibece­s­tat) af­ter an in­de­pen­dent re­view of the da­ta in­di­cat­ed that pa­tients’ cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties were ac­tu­al­ly wors­en­ing at a faster pace than the place­bo arm.

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