Cancer Drug Kills Four Times More than No Treatment at All

July 7, 2010

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withdrawn for failing to show effectiveness, agency officials said.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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