(25-07-10) Cancer Drug Kills Four Times More than No Treatment at All

Drugmaker Pfizer is pulling Mylotarg, a decade-old leukemia medicine, off the
U.S. market after a study found a higher death rate and no benefit for
patients.
Mylotarg won approval under an abbreviated process. Medicines cleared in that
way have to pass follow-up tests to confirm they work. The FDA asked Pfizer to
withdraw the drug after a recent clinical trial raised concerns about the
product's safety and clinical benefits.
Reuters reports:
"The trial ... showed more deaths in the first couple months of treatment. The
fatality rate was 5.7 percent for Mylotarg patients, compared with 1.4 percent
without the drug, Pfizer said. Mylotarg is the first drug approved under the
FDA's abbreviated process to be withdrawn for failing to show effectiveness,
agency officials said."
Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, has also suspended trials of an
experimental pain relief drug for osteoarthritis, Tanezumab, after reports that
patients' conditions worsened and led to joint replacements.
Following a U.S. Food and Drug Administration request, Pfizer isn't recruiting
any new patients or giving the drug to patients already in 10 osteoarthritis
trials.
According to Bloomberg:
"Tanezumab would generate an estimated $100 million in annual sales by the end
of 2012, and $260 million by 2013 ... The drug was one of 500 projects the
company had preserved in a pared-down development portfolio. Pfizer said in
April 2009 that the drug as a treatment for the pain of osteoarthritis in the
knee had moved into the third and final stage of testing usually needed for
regulatory approval."

Sources:
Reuters June 21, 2010
Bloomberg June 23, 2010

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