Pfizer Terminates Development on Cholesterol Drug
I’m late in getting this out and everyone probably already knows about this but Pfizer announced that they will be discontinuing all development of its latest cholesterol drug Torcetrapib.
Pfizer scraps cholesterol drug:
It’s chemical structure is shown below.
Pfizer has been working on this for about 15 years and may have sank more then $800 million into its development. The latest trend in cholesterol treatment is to not only lower overall cholesterol but to increase the so called “good cholesterol” (HDL). THere are several companies looking into this in some way. One of these that I have mentioned previously is Niacin (vitamin B3). It was used quite a bite before the statin drugs but had the side effect of causing flushing. Now several companies including Merck are working on drugs that would block this flushing. The drug they are working on is called MK-0524.
I found the structure in the literature and it is shown below.
Another article in Forbes talks a little more about Pfizer’s failure.
Behind Pfizer’s Failure - Forbes.com
They mention that this won’t sink Pfizer but it certainly will be painful. It will also be interesting to see how it shakes out with other companies working on similar drugs.
Other Resources
Yahoo! News Search Results for torcetrapib
torcetrapib - Google News
Google Blog Search: Torcetrapib
Technorati Tags: cholesterol, Pfizer, Torcetrapib
Related Posts:
Bookmark it with:
| 
del.icio.us
| 
Digg it
| 
Furl
| 
Simpy
| 
Spurl
| 
My Yahoo!
|
