The “Break it Down” Blog

BusinessWeek is reporting that Pfizer has given up trying to make Exubera (inhalable insulin) profitable and walked away from the product to the tune of $2.8 billion dollars; handing it back to the original creators, Nektar Therapeutics.

Not surprisingly, the oversight that made Exubera such a huge flop (projected to revolutionize the insulin industry) is the fact that injected insulin has gotten so small and so easy to carry around, suddenly replacing that with something roughly the size of “a can of tennis balls” was sure to fail.

In addition to the inconvenient size of the device, dosing was a constant source of confusion for customers and one of the most dangerous concerns were the lung-damage issues of constantly inhaling the “dust” insulin.