Top 10 pipeline blowups, set­backs and sna­fus in H2 2016

2016 has to rank as one of the most dis­as­trous years in re­cent drug R&D his­to­ry. We’ve been treat­ed to every­thing from a re­peat Phase III de­ba­cle for Eli Lil­ly in Alzheimer’s to back-to-back clin­i­cal holds on a CAR-T drug that kills pa­tients from Juno. We’ve seen stel­lar or­ga­ni­za­tions like Bris­tol-My­ers’ R&D team over­step while Gilead went from do­ing no wrong to do­ing no right.

And that was just what we saw in the last few months.

These weren’t just the nor­mal fail­ures you can ex­pect in any busi­ness as high risk as bio­phar­ma R&D. There’s bad judg­ment and some­times eva­sive­ness in the face of em­bar­rass­ing dis­as­ters.

Add in my look at the top 10 sna­fus for H1, a se­ries of biotech dis­as­ters for com­pa­nies like Seres, Oph­thotech and many oth­ers, and the com­plet­ed pic­ture looks like a night­mare sce­nario for any in­ves­ti­ga­tor in the busi­ness. It’s no co­in­ci­dence that we al­so saw ROIs in R&D con­tin­ue to slide while new ap­provals plunged this year.

Lets hope next year, with block­buster hope­fuls in gene ther­a­py, can­cer, MS and more, can help over­come the pic­ture of in­ep­ti­tude that has dom­i­nat­ed 2016. It can’t get much worse.

Con­tin­ue read­ing for de­tails and analy­sis on H2 2016’s biggest pipeline sna­fus.