GlaxoSmithKline new drug, meant for heart diseases, failed a major test in its late-phase of clinical study. This drug was a huge source of hope for GSK to get a break through in dealing with heart diseases in a completely new way.
Darapladib, the new drug, gave poor performance in the first two major Phase III studies, which is not a big deal as analyst already didn’t expect much from this project.
After this news circulated the market, GSK’s shares went down by 1.2 percent. And it also destroyed the idea that this drug can generate multibillion dollar sales every year.
The company bought full rights of this drugs along with Benlysta, lupus drug, when it purchased Human Genome Sciences, a biotech firm in US, for $3 billion.
Darapladib was able to produce some solid result under controlled conditions, which tempted GSK to do work more on it.
Unlike other drugs, Darapladib targeted Lp-PLA2(an enzyme) which is responsible for artery clogging plaques. Few industry analysts had high hopes from the project and they even claimed it to be $10 billion per year seller but other experts had their doubts.
Current stats suggest that this drug can do $605 million sales in 2018 as per Thomson Reuters Pharma.
This is second time company is facing such failure in this year. Earlier incident was with MAGE-A3 which is a cancer vaccine.
Although the work is still in progress under Phase III trial, GSK is all set to dedicate 150 millions pounds to darapladib project in the final quarter.
Let’s see if this project finally delivers what is expected of it or not.
GSK has also won approvals for many drugs dealing with lung diseases, HIV, cancer etc this year. But its inability to produce results for bigger projects like darapladib and MAGE-A3 is really disappointing and raises questions over company’s ability to take up huge challenges.
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