Five Biopharma Companies Drop on Negative Drug News

Within a 12-hour period five biopharma companies revealed negative drug news that is sending their stocks lower -- in the case of Amylin Pharmaceuticals (AMLN) and Cell Genesys (CEGE), much lower.

After the closing bell Tuesday, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) and Pfizer (PFE) announced a bloodclot drug they're working on didn't perform as well as they'd hoped it would in a clinical trial. As a result, they also said they won't be filing for Food and Drug Administration approval of the product next year, which had been their previous timeline.

Forty-five minutes later, AMLN and Eli Lilly (LLY) announced that four more Byetta patients died. Byetta is their twice-a-day injectable diabetes drug that lowers blood sugar and weight. That's on top of the two pancreatitis-related deaths the FDA disclosed last week. The companies say in this hyper-sensitive drug safety environment, they felt compelled to report the four other fatalities -- even though they don't think they had anything to do with the drug.

And then yesterday morning, Cell Genesys announced it was stopping a late-stage study of its prostate cancer treatment because it saw more deaths in the group of patients getting the drug.

As one biotech executive so aptly put it at a recent investment conference, "It's a risky business." Given all the news within the last 12 hours or so, one could argue that's an understatement.

Comments

[Daniel Haszard:]

Zyprexa has generated a lot of bad press for Eli Lilly and they still have unresolved Zyprexa settlement claims.
Eli Lilly is 'reaping the whirlwind' for aggressive marketing of Zyprexa that has caused suffering and deaths.
Zyprexa is being avoided by doctors they aren't prescribing it for new patients at all anymore.
--
Daniel Haszard 4 year Zyprexa patient who got diabetes from it.

2008 Aug 28 01:23 PM