Mer­ck touts PhI­II da­ta bur­nish­ing $500M plat­form — what kind of bar does it set for a chron­ic cough drug?

Roy Baynes sur­prised some an­a­lysts dur­ing Mer­ck’s in­vestor day last June — its first in five years — when he shone a sur­pris­ing spot­light on gefapix­ant. The P2X3 in­hibitor, he said, has the po­ten­tial to be “a pipeline in a prod­uct,” start­ing with a pro­gram in chron­ic cough.

Topline re­sults from the Phase III tri­als ap­pear to be bear­ing out his en­thu­si­asm. The read­out is al­so set­ting a bar that some see biotech ri­val Bel­lus Health clear­ing eas­i­ly.

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