The top 10 pipeline blowups, set­backs and sna­fus for H2 2018

This is not an in­dus­try that tends to learn much from its cau­tion­ary tales.

No­var­tis earned one of the worst rep­u­ta­tions in the in­dus­try af­ter re­peat­ed mar­ket­ing fi­as­cos, pledged to do bet­ter, and found it­self right smack in one of the biggest scan­dals to en­gulf the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Af­ter we’ve seen re­peat­ed in­stances of over­val­ued biotech uni­corns, Ab­b­Vie wades in and buys Stem­cen­trx for bil­lions, then watch­es as their unim­pres­sive drug steadi­ly un­winds. Alk­er­mes blun­ders through one of the worst de­signed piv­otal stud­ies we’ve seen in years, and in­sists that the FDA shine a bright spot­light on their fail­ures. Pfiz­er spends $850 mil­lion in cash to li­cense a no­table lag­gard in I/O.

Haven’t we seen that play be­fore.

But maybe it’s a good thing to ig­nore some of your set­backs. As­traZeneca has missed far more of­ten than it hits in piv­otal stud­ies — but hey, they man­aged to hit rock bot­tom and start mak­ing their way back up. Score one for sheer, dogged de­ter­mi­na­tion to claw a way back. Didn’t work? Dump it or sell it and move on.

With that I’ll turn you over to my top 10 list of the worst pipeline set­backs, blowups and sna­fus in the sec­ond half of 2018. This isn’t just schaden­freude. Even if the com­pa­nies don’t learn from their mis­takes, you can.

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