Surprising and Yet-Not-Surprising Exit of Lilly's Neuroscience Chief

The WSJ Health Blog is reporting this afternoon that Lilly's head of neuroscience research, David S. Bredt, MD, PhD, is unexpectedly leaving the company after tomorrow. The doc's immediate exit, which is described as voluntary by a Lilly spokesperson, comes in the midst of Lilly's seriously troubled clinical-development program for anti-amyloid compounds to treat Alzheimer disease and the curious (at least to me) purchase of Avid Pharmaceuticals (for $800 million ultimately), which owned a PET amyloid tracer.

Up to the very present, Lilly seemed to be heavily, if not overly, invested in the idea that detecting and attacking amyloid is the major avenue toward the diagnosis and effective treatment of AD. In multiple posts, I begged to differ (see here, here, and here, for instance). Notably last year, Lilly scrapped its clinical development of the anti-amyloid compound semagacestat, because treated patients actually faired worse than placebo-treated patients. Then in January, at the JP Morgan conference, Lilly's CEO suggested that its other investigative anti-amyloid compound, the monoclonal antibody solanezumab, might also be associated with vasogenic edema (which makes sense, actually). Most recently an FDA panel conditionally endorsed the approval of the PET amyloid tracer, florbetapir; although the clinical utility of detecting amyloid in the brains of an aged population is, at the very least, debatable.

Bredt, 46, was evidently some kind of wunderkind in the neuroscience world, obtaining an MD and PhD from Johns Hopkins in the early 90s and thereafter serving on the faculty at UCSF until 2007, when he made the transition to Lilly. Seems like a sashay back to academia is possible, if not probable, after such an abrupt and unceremonious departure from the private sector.

Very delayed update: JNJ "poached" Bredt, said the WSJ Health Blog in March. So he remains in industry.