AstraZeneca, As Expected, Pulls the Plug

Late last year came word that the AstraZeneca/Rigel compound, fostamatinib, had failed to show any benefit versus AbbVie's Humira in the clinic. Now they've gritted their corporate teeth and declared failure, sending the whole program back to Rigel.

I've lost count of how many late-stage clinical wipeouts this makes for AZ, but it sure is a lot of them. The problem is, it's hard to say just how much of this is drug discovery itself (after all, we have brutal failure rates even when things are going well), how much of it is just random bad luck, or what might be due to something more fundamental about target and compound selection. At any rate, their CEO, Pascal Soirot, has a stark backdrop against which to perform. Odds are, things will pick up, just by random chance if by nothing else. But odds are, that may not be enough. . .

Source: In the Pipeline - June 4, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Business and Markets Source Type: blogs