Novartis shares plunged 14 percent to $137.63 on Tuesday as investors repriced the Lp(a) cholesterol drug class after pelacarsen failed its Phase III trial. Amgen dropped 10 percent to $394.38 despite a positive oncology readout the same morning, while Eli Lilly slipped 2 percent on read-through concerns.
Amgen shares fell 10 percent to $394.38 on Tuesday as Novartis's failed pelacarsen trial repriced the Lp(a) cholesterol drug class, interrupting a 23 percent year-to-date gain for the Dow Jones component.
"The Lp(a) hypothesis is weakened, but not disproven," Citi analysts said in a research note, adding that additional data would be required to assess whether the shortfall stems from pelacarsen's mechanism of action, the trial design, or a wider challenge to the idea that reducing Lp(a) lowers heart attack and stroke risk.
Novartis said last Thursday that pelacarsen, an antisense oligonucleotide developed with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, missed its primary composite endpoint of cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack, non-fatal stroke, and urgent coronary revascularization in the 8,323-patient Phase III Lp(a)HORIZON study. The drug lowered Lp(a) levels but did not demonstrate that this translated into reduced cardiovascular risk in the overall population, Shreeram Aradhye, president of development and chief medical officer at Novartis, said in a statement.
The readout marks the first significant late-stage stumble among programs targeting Lp(a), an inherited cardiovascular risk factor affecting roughly one in five people worldwide with no approved targeted treatment. Amgen's Olpasiran, in the Phase 3 OCEAN(a)-Outcomes trial, is now the most exposed pipeline asset in the class. Eli Lilly fell 2 percent to $1,124.77 on read-through concerns about its own cardiovascular program.
The selloff unfolded even as Amgen posted a positive Phase 3 readout of its own. The DeLLphi-305 study met its primary endpoint, showing a statistically significant improvement in overall survival for IMDELLTRA plus Imfinzi as first-line maintenance in extensive-stage small cell lung cancer. AstraZeneca partly funded the study and supplied Imfinzi as the comparator.
The gap between the pharma names and the broad tape shows the sector-specific nature of the repricing. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust fell just 0.37 percent, while the Health Care Select Sector SPDR ETF, which holds both Amgen and Eli Lilly, absorbed the same-day selloff.
Amgen's cholesterol franchise still matters to the investment case. Repatha, its PCSK9 inhibitor, generated $876 million in Q1 2026 revenue on 34 percent year-over-year growth and 35 percent volume growth. But the pelacarsen miss lowers the odds on Olpasiran, the longer-dated Lp(a) bet Amgen has invested years in.
The failure compounds pressure on Novartis, which also announced Tuesday that del-desiran, an experimental treatment for myotonic dystrophy type 1 acquired through its $12 billion purchase of Avidity Biosciences, failed a late-stage study. The back-to-back setbacks wiped roughly $29.6 billion off Novartis's market value and raise the stakes for its remaining pipeline, including the anti-inflammatory drug remibrutinib.
Investors will watch Amgen's presentation at the 2026 Wells Fargo Healthcare Conference as the next scheduled event that could reframe the Lp(a) narrative. Whether the pelacarsen failure represents a failed drug or a failed idea cannot be settled from a single topline result.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
