The hunt for blockbuster drugs has sent pharmaceutical companies into llama farms, outer space, and the soils of Easter Island. For Bristol Myers Squibb, an industry stalwart in need of a hit, the search has led somewhere arguably stranger: the 1990s.
The New Jersey drugmaker is betting a pill called Cobenfy can become the first approved medicine for the millions of Americans diagnosed with psychosis related to Alzheimer’s disease. That case rests almost entirely on a single clinical trial, conducted before the DVD was invented, in which its striking benefits were derailed by damning side effects.
Later this year, Bristol will get the results from three pivotal studies designed to make good on the promise of that 30-year-old trial. It’s the culmination of a scientific relay race, starting in the labs of Eli Lilly before ending up in the hands of a Boston startup called Karuna Therapeutics, which came up with a clever way to rescue it from the pharmaceutical dustbin and nearly went out of business in the process.
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