Stroke risk forces Mer­ck to scrap its long-ne­glect­ed PhI­II os­teo­poro­sis drug odanacat­ib

Mer­ck is scrap­ping its Phase III os­teo­poro­sis drug odanacat­ib af­ter con­clud­ing that the drug in­creased the risk of strokes among pa­tients tak­ing the drug.

In a state­ment ear­ly Fri­day, Mer­ck not­ed it had “pre­vi­ous­ly re­port­ed a nu­mer­ic im­bal­ance in ad­ju­di­cat­ed stroke events in the piv­otal Phase 3 frac­ture out­comes study in post­menopausal women. The com­pa­ny has de­cid­ed to dis­con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ment af­ter an in­de­pen­dent ad­ju­di­ca­tion and analy­sis of ma­jor ad­verse car­dio­vas­cu­lar events con­firmed an in­creased risk of stroke.”

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