EQRx's pric­ing re­form mod­el on life sup­port as ex­ecs shed PD-L1 plans in US for lung can­cer

EQRx placed a sub­stan­tial bet it could shake up the US health­care sys­tem, promis­ing to bring a swath of drugs to mar­ket that was sim­i­lar to prod­ucts from oth­er Big Phar­mas but priced sub­stan­tial­ly low­er. Its first ef­fort has just fall­en flat — and it ap­pears it’s back­track­ing on at least some of its pric­ing promis­es.

In a third quar­ter up­date ear­ly Thurs­day morn­ing, EQRx blunt­ly an­nounced that its an­ti-PD-L1 drug, dubbed sug­e­mal­imab, is no longer com­mer­cial­ly vi­able in lung can­cer, and ex­ecs will in­stead pri­or­i­tize two oth­er clin­i­cal pro­grams. EQRx said the path to mar­ket was cut off af­ter FDA feed­back sug­gest­ed sug­e­mal­imab would need to clear a sub­stan­tial­ly high­er thresh­old in a Phase III study.

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