Mer­ck’s $1B cash gam­ble pays off with a sur­pris­ing PhI­II car­dio suc­cess for Bay­er’s heart drug veri­ciguat

More than 3 years af­ter Mer­ck stepped up and paid $1 bil­lion in cold, hard cash to gain the US com­mer­cial rights to Bay­er’s high-risk heart drug veri­ciguat in a broad-rang­ing car­dio al­liance, the part­ners say their Phase III study has come through with promis­ing da­ta and a date with reg­u­la­tors.

We don’t have the da­ta, and won’t un­til they put it out at an up­com­ing sci­en­tif­ic ses­sion, but Mer­ck tout­ed the re­sults, say­ing that their big Phase III VIC­TO­RIA study hit the pri­ma­ry end­point  — with veri­ciguat com­bined with avail­able ther­a­pies re­duc­ing “the risk of the com­pos­ite end­point of heart fail­ure hos­pi­tal­iza­tion or car­dio­vas­cu­lar death in pa­tients with wors­en­ing chron­ic heart fail­ure with re­duced ejec­tion frac­tion (HFrEF) com­pared to place­bo when giv­en in com­bi­na­tion with avail­able heart fail­ure ther­a­pies.”

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Venture & Research Associate

Alexandria Real Estate Equities

San Francisco, CA, USA