Glax­o­SmithK­line, Mer­ck KGaA of­fi­cial­ly call it quits on $4B part­ner­ship for flail­ing can­cer drug

Glax­o­SmithK­line’s R&D head Hal Bar­ron has spent his four years on the job tak­ing swing af­ter swing to re­ju­ve­nate the drug gi­ant’s pipeline af­ter years of in­er­tia. One of Bar­ron’s biggest swings has now blown up in his face af­ter a key can­cer drug went down in flames in the clin­ic.

GSK and Mer­ck KGaA have end­ed their $4 bil­lion col­lab­o­ra­tion on bin­tra­fusp al­fa, a once-promis­ing can­cer drug and the crown jew­el of Bar­ron’s pipeline re­build ef­forts that has en­dured a spate of fail­ures in re­cent months, the com­pa­nies said Thurs­day.

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