Eli Lilly laid blame Tuesday afternoon on President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act as the reason it scrapped a $40 million cancer drug.
As part of its third quarter update earlier Tuesday morning, the Big Pharma revealed it had removed a Phase I drug licensed from Fosun Pharma, a BCL2 inhibitor that had been undergoing studies for a variety of blood cancers. Though the reasoning had been initially unclear, an Eli Lilly spokesperson told Endpoints News in an email that “in light of the Inflation Reduction Act, this program no longer met our threshold for continued investment.”
Asked to explain how the IRA impacted this specific drug, the spokesperson highlighted the law’s impact on small molecule R&D.
“The IRA changes many dynamics for small molecules in oncology and when we integrated those changes with this program and its competitive landscape, the program’s future investment no longer met our threshold,” the spokesperson told Endpoints in a follow-up email.
1 Discontinued Drug: LOXO-338 (small molecule)
1 Discontinued Research Program
