British Biotech (Oxford, UK) has suffered yet another disappointment related to its anticancer drug marimastat (Nat. Biotechnol., 17, 409, 1999). The company's most recent phase III clinical trial looked at the effect of the matrix metalloproteinase inhibitor on patients with advanced pancreatic cancer and found no significant improvement in survival rates compared with placebo. When tested in combination with nucleoside analog gemcitabine, no significant benefits were attributable to marimastat. British Biotech shares fell more than 40% to $4 15/16 following news of the trial. Despite the setback, the company and its partner, Schering-Plough (Madison, NJ), say they will go forward with development of the drug. Results from four additional ongoing trials are expected sometime in 2000: two studies on small-cell lung cancer, one on the brain cancer glioblastoma, and one on ovarian cancer. British Biotech expresses confidence that the drug will be more effective on earlier stages of cancer and says the small-cell lung cancer trials are expected to be the most promising.