Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Jason Alden/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Some­times you win. Some­times you lose. And some­times it's just an­oth­er PhI­II canakinum­ab fail

At this stage of the game, No­var­tis CEO Vas Narasimhan may be wish­ing he’d nev­er even heard of canakinum­ab.

Af­ter steer­ing the drug straight to an FDA re­jec­tion as a heart drug, no cheap shot af­ter test­ing it in 10,000 pa­tients, the No­var­tis team picked up on an un­usu­al can­cer sig­nal — and has now fol­lowed it over their third suc­ces­sive cliff to a de­ci­sive Phase III flop.

It’s safe to say the game was al­ready all over ex­cept for the read­out.

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