RIP tanezum­ab? Eli Lil­ly, Pfiz­er spot­light alarm­ing safe­ty da­ta for NGF pain drug in PhI­II

Near­ly a decade af­ter the an­ti-NGF class of pain drugs was crushed by safe­ty is­sues and then be­gan a long, ag­o­niz­ing­ly slow re­turn to late-stage test­ing, it may all be over soon. Pfiz­er and Eli Lil­ly post­ed a set of longterm out­comes from a Phase III study of tanezum­ab, and once they got a glimpse of the da­ta an­a­lysts im­me­di­ate­ly start­ed to pen last rites for the drug.

A ri­val ther­a­py from Re­gen­eron and Te­va isn’t be­ing giv­en good odds of sur­vival.

There were mixed ef­fi­ca­cy re­sults for the Pfiz­er/Lil­ly pro­gram, with on­ly the high dose achiev­ing a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment for pain and phys­i­cal func­tion over NSAIDS. And the pain da­ta were alarm­ing, re­flect­ing ear­li­er con­cerns spot­light­ed by re­searchers.

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