Eli Lilly, Alkermes to discontinue development of diabetes drug

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Less than two months after announcing that it would continue to work with Eli Lilly on developing an inhalable form of insulin for diabetes patients, Alkermes has announced that it expects to end that collaboration, according to published reports.

Alkermes said it expects Lilly to make a decision to discontinue the program next week and added that it is not aware of any safety, efficacy or manufacturing issues that have arisen regarding the product, AIR Insulin, since Lilly's last public update on the program.

This would be the third inhalable insulin drug given up on, including Exubera by Pfizer and AERx by Novo Nordisk. Both of those drugs resulted in huge losses for their respective companies and were therefore discontinued.