Major heart pill on its way

Created: Thursday, July 27, 2006 Print
Pfizer, Inc. will apply for approval to sell a new heart treatment as a stand-alone pill, rather than only in combination with Lipitor, the company's best-selling cholesterol treatment, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The new drug, torcetrapib, is still being tested in clinical trials and could be at least 18 months away from US federal approval. Trials so far have shown that torcetrapib, a statin drug, substantially raises the levels of so-called good cholesterol, a novel approach to preventing heart attacks and strokes, and Wall Street analysts say it could become a blockbuster medicine, with sales of several billion dollars annually, the Times reported.

Pfizer's decision reverses a strategy that had drawn criticism from doctors who said the company was putting profits ahead of patients health. Not all patients, doctors complained, can easily switch from one statin to another, and some patients cannot take statins at all. In June 2005, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine criticised Pfizer's strategy. By offering torcetrapib only in a combination pill, Pfizer would have forced patients taking other statins such as Zocor, from Merck to switch to Lipitor if they wanted torcetrapib's benefits, the Times reported.

Pfizer expects to submit an application to the US Food and Drug Administration to sell the combination pill in the second half of 2007, and if the drug trials continue to show good results, the FDA could give its approval for the stand-alone pill by the first half of 2008. – (HealthDayNews)

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Heart Centre

July 2006

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