Novartis tried to prove that lowering Lp(a) levels prevents heart attacks. The drug did not prove that. Shareholders who bought the stock because they read a press release about promising Phase 2 data in 2019 now understand the difference between correlation and causation. Expensive lesson.
Amgen and Eli Lilly are still in the race. They're spending billions to develop their own Lp(a)-lowering drugs. Novartis just handed them a roadmap of what doesn't work, which they will ignore completely because that's not how pharmaceutical companies operate. Each one needs to lose its own money in its own unique way.
The multibillion-dollar race continues. Except now it's a multibillion-dollar race where one of the horses collapsed before the first turn and everyone's pretending that doesn't change the odds. Analysts will downgrade their Novartis price targets by 3% and upgrade their Amgen targets by 2% because moving numbers around creates the illusion of understanding.
Retail traders who diversified into all three companies because they heard someone mention Lp(a) on a podcast are now frantically googling whether two-thirds of a basket strategy still counts as diversification. It does not.
The patients who actually have high Lp(a) levels and desperately need a treatment will wait another five years while Amgen and Eli Lilly run their own trials to discover whether their drugs also don't prevent heart attacks. But the important thing is that everyone involved learned absolutely nothing and the sector rotation into weight-loss drugs remains unaffected.
Novartis will pivot to a different cardiovascular program. Amgen will release a statement affirming confidence in its distinct mechanism of action. Eli Lilly will say nothing because it's too busy printing money on diabetes drugs. And somewhere, a cardiologist is explaining to a patient that no, there still isn't a proven way to lower your Lp(a), but have they considered eating less bread?
The race continues. The finish line keeps moving. The horses are all limping.
Photo by Çağlar Oskay on Unsplash
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