"The recommendation by the Independent Data Monitoring Committee and the Company's decision is related only to this Clinical Trial," the pair said in a statement. Germany's Merck was down more than 3% on the news, with GSK down 1.5% premarket. "We have pioneered the science behind bintrafusp alfa, and now through a strategic alliance, multiple non-correlated parallel hypotheses are being evaluated across numerous indications in our extensive INTR@PID clinical program," said Danny Bar-Zohar, M.D., global head of development for the healthcare business of Merck KGaA. "We remain committed to further evaluation of bintrafusp alfa, and these data from INTR@PID Lung 037 will provide important insights that may be applied to future studies." Analyst at Jefferies said that Merck remains confident the drug is "active" but are unclear why it was hit by a failure, although they said it is not due to any safety issues.