Merck's Cordaptive: Just Another Cholesterol Combo, or More?

At first glance, Merck & Co. Inc.’s Cordaptive—the drug giant’s next hoped-for approval, slated for an end-April PDUFA—is everything Big Pharma knows it shouldn’t be doing anymore. It’s a line-extension. It’s a combination drug that marries Merck’s own long-acting version of now-generic niacin with a compound that reduces niacin’s irritating (but not dangerous) side-effect, flushing. It looks, then, like the kind of poorly differentiated me-too that payors, investors and, increasingly, regulators, can’t be doing with. A gift horse to industry critics that say drug firms are unethically squeezing money out of Treasury purses for barely new drugs, in other words.