Bristol-Myers (BMY) plunges on failed lung cancer drug trial

• A cancer immunotherapy shocker has Bristol-Myers Squibb tumbling and rival Merck soaring on Friday morning. 
•  The drug, Opdivo, failed to meet a phase 3 trial primary endpoint
• The drop in the shares Friday -- the worst in more than 16 years -- had as much to do with the failure of Bristol-Myers’s drug Opdivo in a clinical trial for lung cancer as it did with investors’ now-shaken confidence in the New York-based company’s ability to be the breakaway leader in the field. 
• No other large pharmaceutical company has recently focused on one disease area like Bristol-Myers has, in this case by targeting drugs that leverage the immune system to attack tumors. The trial results, which showed that Opdivo failed to do better than chemotherapy at keeping previously untreated patients’ cancer from progressing, have left the door open for competitors like Merck & Co., AstraZeneca Plc and Roche Holding AG.
• Immunotherapy is a market potentially worth billions of dollars a year -- Opdivo is predicted by analysts to bring in $10.7 billion in 2020, and the immune-system drugs are projected to make up almost half of Bristol-Myers’s sales by that time. Lung cancer is the biggest killer in oncology, according to the American Cancer Society.