Opportunity Cost: How Alkermes Plans to Survive the Long Winter

It's been a long and largely unpleasant summer for Alkermes--a major product delay and, thanks to the subsequent stock drop, the cancellation of its acquisition of Reliant and the chance to turn itself into a commercial organization. Now it's cut back on spending--laying off 23% of its workers and, in the process, creating a pipeline gap for the company as it pushes forward with late-stage Vivitrex and slows down on preclinical and early clinical work and giving up the flexibility "to be expansive," says the company's CEO.

It's been a long and largely unpleasant summer for Alkermes Inc. At the end of June, Johnson & Johnson , Alkermes' partner on long acting, injectable risperidone (Risperdal Consta), told the drug-delivery company that the FDA had issued a non-approvable letter for the schizophrenia drug, Alkermes' most important late-stage program [See Deal]. Its shares dropped 75% in two days.

The drop in share price virtually killed Alkermes' proposed stock-swap acquisition of Reliant Pharmaceuticals Inc. [See Deal] At the...

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