Lilly shares fall as company abandons evacetrapib development
pharmafile | October 13, 2015 | News story | Manufacturing and Production | evacetrapib, high cholesterol, lilly, phase III, phase III failure
Eli Lilly shares fell by nearly 8% this week as the company announced it will abandon developmenty of the investigational heart drug evacetrapib, due to a lack of effect in Phase III trials.
The Indianapolis-based company had invested millions of dollars and recruited more than 12,000 people into Phase III evacetrapib trials in the US, Europe and Japan. The candidate had been the sole cardiovascular medication in its pipeline: a CETP inhibitor which promotes ‘good cholesterol’ and helps remove fatty lipids from the arteries.
Lilly had hoped the treatment for high-risk atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease would become its latest blockbuster. Analysts had forecast sales anywhere between $1 and $4 billion had evacetrapib gained approval from regulators.
However an independent data monitoring committee recommended Lilly terminate the trial, based on periodic data reviews which suggested it was unlikely the study would achieve its primary endpoint based on results to date.
The company pointed out that the study was not being stopped for safety reasons, and that it would publish the results to-date in scientific forums in the future, following further analysis.
David Ricks, Lilly’s senior vice president and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, comments: “We’re obviously disappointed in this outcome, as we hoped that evacetrapib would offer an advance in treatment for people with high-risk cardiovascular disease. We’ll be working with investigators to appropriately conclude these trials. We remain confident in our pipeline as we prepare for launches in other therapeutic areas with significant unmet needs.”
“This unfortunate outcome for evacetrapib does not change our ability to generate long-term growth,” says Derica Rice, Lilly’s executive vice president and chief financial officer. “Our recent string of positive data-readouts and our strong pipeline position us to grow revenue and expand margins through the remainder of this decade.”
Lilly forecasts the discontinuation of development of evacetrapib to result in a fourth-quarter charge to research and development expense of up to $90 million.
The announcement also affected Merck, which is developing its own CETP inhibitor, anacetrapib. The American company’s shares fell by around 2% on Monday.
Joel Levy
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