PharmaTimes | Industry News | World News | Lilly hit by spectacular failure of Phase III Alzheimer’s candidate: "There was more bad news for Eli Lilly following the spectacular failure of its late-stage Alzheimer’s disease candidate, and a new question mark over the future of Cymbalta in chronic pain.
The group’s shares closed down nearly 3% last night as shareholders mulled over news that the company is pulling the plug on semagacestat for Alzheimer’s disease, after the experimental drug disappointed in Phase III trials.
Preliminary findings show that not only did semagacestat, a gamma secretase inhibitor, fail to slow disease progression, but that it was actually associated with “worsening of clinical measures of cognition and the ability to perform activities of daily living”.
In addition, the data showed that patients taking Lilly’s drug had an increased risk of skin cancer compared with those in the placebo arm, putting the final nail in the clinical programme. But the company will continue collecting follow-up data for at least six months, “for the benefit of future Alzheimer’s research”.
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