News briefs: Roche's dalcetrapib; Coherus/Daiichi deal; Mercury Pharma; AEterna Zentaris

8 May 2012

Swiss drug major Roche (ROG: SIX) saw its shares drop 4.5% to 159.30 Swiss francs by around midday yesterday, after it announced that, following the results of the second interim analysis of the dalcetrapib dal-OUTCOMES Phase III trial, the independent Data and Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) has recommended stopping the trial due to a lack of clinically meaningful efficacy.

The dal-OUTCOMES trial evaluated the efficacy and safety profile of dalcetrapib when added to existing standard of care in patients with stable coronary heart disease (CHD) following an acute coronary syndrome (ACS). No safety signals relating to the dal-OUTCOMES trial were reported from the DSMB, said Roche.

Dalcetrapib was one of nine medicines with potential sales of more than 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.1 billion) each that Roche planned to introduce by 2016. Gbola Amusa, an analyst at UBS AG quoted by Bloomberg, had predicted the drug could generate $6.8 billion in revenue by 2020 and given it a one-in-four chance of succeeding.

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