As Eli Lil­ly steams ahead with a close­ly-watched BTK drug, its ri­vals at Mer­ck are tak­ing a $275M write-down on de­lay

Mer­ck was crys­tal clear from the be­gin­ning that its $2.7 bil­lion in­vest­ment in the Ar­Qule buy­out 2 years ago cen­tered large­ly around the val­ue of its lead ther­a­py, the BTK in­hibitor now dubbed nemtabru­ti­nib (MK-1026).

But it’s not hold­ing up quite the way the phar­ma gi­ant had ex­pect­ed.

Rais­ing a red flag on the pro­gram, Mer­ck not­ed in its 10-K that the num­bers crunch­ers on board have writ­ten off $275 mil­lion for an im­pair­ment charge, re­duc­ing the re­main­ing IPR&D in­tan­gi­ble as­set re­lat­ed to nemtabru­ti­nib to a more mod­est $2 bil­lion.

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