Mer­ck just dashed the last re­main­ing hopes for its in­dus­try-lead­ing BACE drug for Alzheimer's

The Alzheimer’s field  is keep­ing its per­fect record for fail­ure in piv­otal Phase III stud­ies.

Mer­ck to­day scrapped the last re­main­ing Phase III study of its lead­ing BACE ther­a­py verube­ce­s­tat, the sec­ond of two col­lapsed stud­ies, af­ter in­de­pen­dent mon­i­tors con­clud­ed that the drug wasn’t work­ing for ear­ly-stage, pro­dro­mal pa­tients.

Back in Feb­ru­ary Mer­ck sig­naled its lack of suc­cess with the drug, which moves up­stream to re­duce the pro­duc­tion of amy­loid be­ta, when it punt­ed its Phase III tri­al in mild-to-mod­er­ate pa­tients.

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