Reel­ing from a hefty civ­il and crim­i­nal set­tle­ment, Avanir stum­bles in­to PhI­II Alzheimer's fail­ure

Avanir’s no good, aw­ful, sim­ply ter­ri­ble week came to a dis­as­trous end last Fri­day as the Ot­su­ka sub­sidiary was forced to re­port that its sec­ond Phase III tri­al for a new-and-im­proved ver­sion of its com­mer­cial drug had failed in treat­ing Alzheimer’s de­men­tia — like­ly scut­tling any fu­ture it may have had in the most dif­fi­cult of all dis­eases.

The news came one day af­ter Avanir agreed to pay $116 mil­lion in civ­il and crim­i­nal pay­ments and en­ter in­to a de­ferred ad­ju­di­ca­tion agree­ment re­volv­ing around whistle­blow­er claims that com­pa­ny reps had paid doc­tors to pre­scribe Nuedex­ta in nurs­ing homes as a way to con­trol de­men­tia pa­tients.

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