Mer­ck and Bay­er un­veil the da­ta be­hind their CV ‘suc­cess,’ un­der­whelm­ing the in­dus­try

Four months af­ter Mer­ck an­nounced a sur­prise Phase III suc­cess on the heart drug they gave Bay­er $1 bil­lion for, the full da­ta is out — and car­di­ol­o­gists, in­vestors and pay­ers are left won­der­ing just how ef­fec­tive the drug re­al­ly is.

The da­ta, pub­lished in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine and an­nounced in the vir­tu­al Amer­i­can Col­lege of Car­di­ol­o­gy meet­ing, showed that across 5,050 pa­tients, veri­ciguat led to a 10% re­duc­tion in hos­pi­tal­iza­tions for heart fail­ure. Al­though that met the pri­ma­ry end­point — the com­pos­ite of time un­til first death or hos­pi­tal­iza­tion for heart fail­ure — it un­der­whelmed, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the drug did not lead to a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in death.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER