That didn't take long. Just a few days after Roger Perlmutter at Merck (MRK) had praised the team that developed Bridon (sugammadex), the FDA turned it down for the second time. The FDA seems to be worried about hypersensitivity reactions to the drug --- that was the grounds on which they rejected it in 2008. Merck ran another study to address this, but the agency apparently is now concerned about how that trial was run. What we know, according to FiercePharma, is that they "needed to assess an inspection of a clinical trial site conducting the hypersensitivity study." Frustratingly for Merck, their application was approved in the EU back in that 2008 submission period.
It's an odd compound, and it had a nomination in the "Ugliest Drug Candidate" competition awhile back. That's because it works by a very unusual mechanism. It's there to reverse the effects of rocuronium, a neuromuscular blockade agent used in anaesthesia. Sugammadex is a cyclodextrin derivative, a big cyclic polysaccharide of the sort that have been used to encapsulate many compounds in their central cavities. It's the mechanism behind the odor-controlling Febreze spray. (Interestingly, I've read that when that product was introduced, its original formulation failed in the market because it had no scent of its own, and consumers weren't ready for something with no smell that nonetheless decreased other odors.)
The illustration above is from the Wikipedia article on sugammadex, and it shows very well how it's designed to bind rocuronium tightly in a way that it can no longer at at the acetylcholine receptor. Hats off to the Organon folks in Scotland who thought of this. Pity that all of them must be long gone, isn't it?
You see, this is one of the drugs from Schering-Plough that Merck took up when they bought the company, but it was one of the compounds from Organon that Schering-Plough took up when they bought them. (How much patent life can this thing have left by now?) By the way, does anyone still remember the ridiculous setup by which Schering-Plough was supposed to be taking over Merck? Did all that maneuvering accomplish anything at all in the end?
At any rate, Merck really doesn't seem to have gotten a lot out of the deal, and this latest rejection doesn't make it look any better. Not all of those problems were (or could have been) evident at the time, but enough of them were to make a person wonder. I'm willing to nominate it as "Most Pointless Big Pharma Merger," and would be glad to hear the case for other contenders.
Disclosure: None.
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