Mer­ck hits a bloop sin­gle in an epic PhI­II CETP car­dio con­test. Now what?

Mer­ck $MRK has an in­ter­est­ing dilem­ma on its hands.

The drug’s enor­mous Phase III study of its CETP drug anace­trapib came through on the key end­point — but it was at best a base hit for an enor­mous pa­tient pop­u­la­tion. And af­ter it missed a key sec­ondary and showed signs of ac­cu­mu­lat­ing in fat, Mer­ck now has to de­cide if it wants to go to bat with reg­u­la­tors in search of an ap­proval for a mar­gin­al heart drug.

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