Did Merck KGaA’s aging atacicept just fail a PhIIb lupus trial? Well, yes, but…
Merck KGaA says that atacicept, one of its top, long-running drug prospects in the pipeline, failed a Phase IIb trial for lupus. That failure follows a 2009 flop for multiple sclerosis, but Merck KGaA is nothing if not persistently sunny in the face of all setbacks.
The German Merck, not to be confused with the U.S. rival by the same name, says the drug missed on the primary endpoint: the proportion of patients achieving a clinical response as defined by a composite SLE Responder Index (SRI)-4 at week 24.
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