The billion dollar fairy tale ending for BioMS and Eli Lilly’s experimental treatment for multiple sclerosis dirucotide looked as if it has firmly been consigned to the land of fantasy yesterday, following the second failure of the drug, this time in a pivotal phase III trial, leading the two groups to announce they would be halting all further development.

The drug was the only late stage candidate in BioMS’ very thin pipeline, which consists of only one other pre-clinical candidate, so it was unsurprising that shares in the Canadian company, which had been buoyed by the hope that Lilly might eventually take out its partner on the back of positive clinical data, fell like a stone today. In early trading they were 88% lower at 32 cents.