Novartis heart drug pelacarsen fails Phase III, Amgen falls 10%, Novartis drops 14%

David Moadel Tue, September 8, 2026 at 10:08 AM PDT 6 min read

• AMGN
• LLY
• NVS
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• SPY

Quick Read

• Novartis's pelacarsen miss sent Amgen down 10% and Eli Lilly down 2%, punishing the entire Lp(a) drug class for one competitor's failed trial.
• SPY fell just 0.37% while pharma names cratered, confirming markets are repricing Lp(a) pipeline risk sectorwide rather than reacting to broad economic weakness.
• Citi analysts warn the Lp(a) hypothesis itself may be flawed, leaving Amgen's Olpasiran in Phase 3 OCEAN(a)-Outcomes as the most exposed pipeline asset.

A failed cholesterol trial from Novartis (NYSE:NVS) is dragging the Lp(a) drug class lower and hitting Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) harder than any large-cap peer in Tuesday trading. The selloff is unfolding even as Amgen posted a positive Phase 3 readout of its own in small cell lung cancer — an unusual split that captures how brutally the market can price competitor risk in biotech.

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Amgen stock is down 10% to $394.38 at midday, interrupting a gain of 23% year to date (YTD) heading into the session. The move carries added weight because Amgen holds the fourth-largest position in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, so today's decline pressures that index alongside health care specifically.

Meanwhile, Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) shares are down 2% to $1,124.77 on read-through concerns about its own Lp(a) program. As for Novartis stock, it is tumbling 14% to $137.63 on Tuesday afternoon. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is down 0.37%, so today's pharma-sector pain is not washing across the broad tape. That gap between the biotech names and the benchmark tells you the market is pricing pipeline risk at the sector level.

Pelacarsen Miss Rattles the Lp(a) Class

Novartis said last Thursday that pelacarsen, an experimental heart drug developed with Ionis Pharmaceuticals, failed to reduce cardiovascular risk in a late-stage trial. The Novartis 8,323-patient Phase III study lowered Lp(a) levels while missing its primary composite endpoint covering cardiovascular death, non-fatal heart attack, non-fatal stroke, and urgent coronary revascularization.

Citi analysts said the Lp(a) hypothesis has been weakened, with additional data needed to establish whether the shortfall came from the drug's mechanism, the trial's design, or the underlying idea that lowering Lp(a) reduces cardiovascular risk. Amgen and Eli Lilly are both developing Lp(a)-lowering therapies using different technical approaches, so a class-defining failure at a rival forces investors to reweight the odds on every remaining program.

Amgen's Own Trial Delivered a Win

Here's the