Eli Lil­ly scraps a tau pro­gram for Alzheimer’s, echo­ing past fail­ures and cast­ing doubt on en­tire ap­proach

Dur­ing Tues­day’s third quar­ter earn­ings call with in­vestors, Eli Lil­ly re­vealed it sub­mit­ted its Alzheimer’s can­di­date do­nanemab for ap­proval, us­ing the same ac­cel­er­at­ed path­way chart­ed by Bio­gen’s con­tro­ver­sial Aduhelm. The phar­ma al­so said it would pit do­nanemab against Aduhelm head to head in a Phase III study, throw­ing down the gaunt­let for a po­ten­tial­ly multi­bil­lion dol­lar mar­ket.

But Lil­ly al­so dis­closed an Alzheimer’s fail­ure, not­ing an an­ti-tau pro­gram called zagoten­emab missed the pri­ma­ry end­point in a Phase II study, lead­ing the com­pa­ny to scut­tle de­vel­op­ment. Though CMO and CSO Dan Skovron­sky said in open­ing re­marks Lil­ly is still com­mit­ted to re­search­ing tau, he took a de­cid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent tack dur­ing the call’s ques­tion and an­swer ses­sion.

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