Of all the ways to spend $5.8 billion

Back in June, when an AbbVie drug called Rov-T posted disappointing results in small cell lung cancer, Leerink analyst Geoffrey Porges walked away concluding that “we can’t help but regard the ongoing trials as largely fruitless exercises.”

Turns out that was prescient. On Wednesday, AbbVie halted another Phase III Rova-T study, targeting the same cancer, because patients getting the drug actually fared worse than those getting standard of care.

You may recall that back in 2016 AbbVie paid $5.8 billion for a company called Stemcentryx to get its hands on Rova-T, which now looks like an expensive albatross that may never become a product. The treatment’s last failure preceded a roughly $50 billion drop in AbbVie’s market value. Trading was suspended on Wednesday, so we’ll have to wait and see what the latest disappointment brings.