Sanofi & Pfizer End Research Into Their Diet Pills
2 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // November 5th, 2008 // 4:50 pm
Sanofi-Aventis is halting all human trials of its ill-fated Acomplia fat pill after authorities in several countries requested local tests be stopped. And Pfizer just disclosed that development of a similar drug is ending.
The move by Sanofi comes two weeks after Sanofi suspended Acomplia sales in response to the European Medicines Agency, which noted that a study revealed obese or overweight patients taking the fat pill faced approximately double the risk of developing psychiatric disorders than patients taking a placebo (back story).
The ending of those trials “compromised the feasibility” of the global clinical program, a Sanofi spokesman tells Bloomberg News. “It’s over.” Last year, the FDA failed to approve Acomplia over psychiatric side effects.
The Pfizer decision comes after a review by an independent data monitoring committee, and in a statement Pfizer says its CP-945,598 compound has the potential to be a safe and effective treatment, but is discontinuing development “based on changing regulatory perspectives on the risk/benefit profile of the CB1 class and likely new regulatory requirements for approval.” This isn’t a total surprise, though, because Pfizer recently announced plans to exit obesity research.
Nonetheless, their respective moves come one month after Merck killed taranabant, which is the same type of drug, over links to psychiatric side effects.
Nathan
Derek Lowe had a nice post on this topic over at “In the Pipeline”. Lest anyone forget why drugs are so expensive, remember that we now have 3 major companies taking compounds to phase-III trails — and barely a penny earned for thier efforts.
I’ll quote Derek:
“And before we all try to forget that this all happened, let’s spare a thought for the huge amounts of time, effort, brainpower and money that went into this area over the last eight or ten years. Three of the biggest research organizations in the industry have now flamed out trying to develop these drugs, and plenty of smaller players were trying, too, as a glance at the patent literature will make clear. The end result is that we have paid a gigantic amount of money to learn that the biology is more complicated than we thought… If you think that drug development is a sure road to riches - if anyone still thinks that - then come survey this wreckage and think again.”
http://www.corante.com/pipeline/
Lyn
What’s really sad to me is that so many people feel so out-of-control and hopeless about their weight that they are willing to risk their lives to take a pill to “fix” it. Same thing we saw in the late 90’s with fen phen. As long as people are so desperate for a quick fix, these drug companies are going to keep pumping out the weight loss pills to the masses, when in fact only a small percentage of the population *needs* a drug to lose weight. But then, who wants to hear the same old line about eating less and moving more? A pill is so much brighter, shinier and more exciting.