Wyeth, Elan Tumble On Chilly Response to Alzheimer’s Drug Data

Shares of Wyeth are off more than 10% this morning and Elan is down more than 30% as the market frets over the future of an Alzheimer’s drug the companies are developing. Yesterday, the companies released the full results of a mid-stage trial that failed to show an overall benefit in cognitive function for Alzheimer’s patients who received the drug, bapineuzumab. The companies said they’re pushing on with a large, late-stage trial, and called the results “encouraging,” noting that the drug did appear to show some benefit in a group of patients who don’t carry a particular gene variant called ApoE4. But researchers only found that benefit by mining the data after the study was completed — a practice a post over at Bnet describes as “wishful thinking and shoddy statistical analysis.” Wall Street analysts weren’t quite as harsh... [read full story]