Tuesday, October 21, 2008

New Remedies to Treat Blood Clots Are Near

From the Wall Street Journal:
Several big drug makers are in a neck-and-neck race to introduce new drugs for treating blood clots, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes, killing as many as a million people a year.

The prize is a chance at a piece of the blood-clot treatment market, which analysts estimate could be worth as much as €15 billion, or about $20 billion, by 2016.
[Treat Blood Clots]

Drugs currently used to prevent blood clots, also known as thrombosis, are effective and sell well but have problems. One popular treatment is difficult to dose and introduces risks when taken with other medicines and some foods. Another is an injectable, making long-term therapy difficult.

Five pharmaceutical companies are working on new treatments for blood clots. Three drugs -- developed by Bayer AG in partnerships with Johnson & Johnson, Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, and Pfizer Inc. in partnership with Bristol Myers-Squibb Co. -- are now in the late phases of clinical testing.

The new drugs are taken by mouth, which makes them easier to use, their dosing is less troublesome, and they need no laboratory monitoring. They are also potentially more effective than existing treatments. The drug developed by Bayer and J&J has shown superior efficacy compared with standard therapy in a recent study. ...more

No comments: