It’s over: Eli Lilly shares tank after its huge gamble on Alzheimer’s drug solanezumab ends in failure
Eli Lilly’s monumental effort to prove once and for all that solanezumab could work in delaying Alzheimer’s has ended in total failure. The pharma giant announced this morning that the drug failed its third Phase III effort at Lilly, sending its stock into a tailspin.
Back in 2012, investigators for Lilly convinced the top execs at the company that they had seen real, tangible benefits for early-stage patients taking the drug, designed to eliminate deposits of amyloid beta in the brain. The data, they felt, warranted another clinical odyssey in Phase III, even though that study had failed. And CEO John Lechleiter was a stout advocate throughout, willing to invest heavily in the study. But in the end, the drug offered nothing but false hope to millions of patients, failing to bend the curve on cognitive declines or the ability of patients to function better.
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