Pos­i­tive PhI­II can't sal­vage Mer­ck­'s anace­trapib, now rel­e­gat­ed to the scrap heap

There will be no CETP heart drug mir­a­cle in the works at Mer­ck.

The phar­ma gi­ant looked over a set of pos­i­tive but trou­ble­some Phase III da­ta for its drug anace­trapib and con­clud­ed to­day that they will rel­e­gate it to the same grave­yard that has greet­ed every oth­er CETP heart drug so far.

The de­ci­sion un­der­scores a tidal shift in drug de­vel­op­er’s stan­dards for launch­ing a big new drug in­to a ma­jor mar­ket, where the da­ta has to point to a com­pelling mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty. Fail­ing that, mar­gin­al drugs don’t stand a chance, even if they might pass muster at the FDA.

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