Try­ing to turn a new leaf, Valeant ‘block­buster’ can’t shed an R&D jinx

Michael Pear­son nev­er much cared for drug de­vel­op­ment or pipelines dur­ing his rocky run as CEO of Valeant $VRX, gen­er­al­ly steer­ing clear of it all as he snapped up as­sets. But Pear­son made an ex­cep­tion for the late-stage eye drug la­tanoprostene bun­od, which he picked up in the $8.7 bil­lion Bausch + Lomb buy­out, con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ing that the com­pa­ny had a block­buster on its hands.

The FDA, though, turned thumbs down on the mar­ket­ing ap­pli­ca­tion a year ago. And it turns out that new CEO Joe Pa­pa is no bet­ter at wan­gling new drug ap­provals than his pre­de­ces­sor.

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