J&J, AstraZeneca Halt Pain Drug Tests on Bone-Damage Concerns - BusinessWeek

Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca Plc stopped studies of experimental painkillers over concerns that a class of drugs once expected to generate as much as $11 billion in annual sales may raise the risk of joint damage.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration notified J&J last week that the development program for the drug fulranumab had been put on hold, Jeffrey Leebaw, a spokesman for New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J, said in an e-mail. London-based AstraZeneca said yesterday it has voluntarily stopped early- stage research of a similar medicine. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Tarrytown, New York, said yesterday the FDA had halted trials of the company’s treatment in the class known as anti- nerve growth factors.

Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drugmaker, suspended trials of the pain drug tanezumab in June after reports that patients in one of its studies needed joint replacements. The move left nerve-growth inhibitors a “tainted class” and has lowered investor expectations, said Ziad Bakri, a Cowen & Co. analyst in New York.

“You’d have to have a lot of safety data to ever get a drug like this approved, so for investors this is not a class that’s generating very high hopes,” Bakri said in a telephone interview. “You’re not going to see many companies chasing these drugs at this point.”

via businessweek.com

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