Stockwatch: Pandora’s Interim Analysis

I was once on a teleconference for middle managers of one big UK pharmaceutical company that was merging with another while the chairman of R&D explained the competitive reasons why neither company could look into the box of R&D assets of the other before the merger completed. One wag speculated at the potential for surprise if, when the companies were finally able to look into each other's R&D boxes, both were found to be empty. Investors in a number of biotechnology companies may have had the same sinking feeling in recent weeks as the interim analyses of clinical trials were announced. I was left wondering whether we were better off in the days before the interim analysis.

The Medicines Company provided an update on its dyslipidemia programs that included the planned interim analysis of the MILANO-PLOT Phase I/II study of MDCO-216 (Apo-A1 Milano) in the first 40...