What does $29B buy you in Big Phar­ma? In Glax­o­SmithK­line’s case, a whole lot of un­com­fort­able ques­tions about the pipeline

Talk about your bad tim­ing.

A lit­tle over a week ago, GSK R&D chief Hal Bar­ron marked his third an­niver­sary at the re­search helm by tak­ing a turn at the vir­tu­al podi­um dur­ing JP Mor­gan to make the case that he and his team had built a valu­able late-stage pipeline ca­pa­ble of churn­ing out more than 10 block­busters in the next 5 years.

And then, just days lat­er, one of the can­cer drugs he bet big on as a top prospect — bin­tra­fusp, part­nered with Mer­ck KGaA — failed its first piv­otal test in non-small cell lung can­cer.

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