Merck and Portola: Finding a Blood Thinner’s Sweet Spot
“In evaluating an anticoagulant,” says heart researcher Michael Ezekowitz, “it’s all about getting the dose right.”
That’s the next big challenge for Merck and its partner Portola as they prepare to advance the closely held South San Francisco biotech’s drug betrixaban into a large-scale clinical trial in the burgeoning race to develop a replacement for the heart drug warfarin.
Ezekowitz, a cardiologist at Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, Wynnewood, Pa., told a packed auditorium at the annual science meeting of the American College of Cardiology on Monday that a daily 40-milligram dose of betrixaban caused significantly fewer cases of major or clinically important bleeding than standard treatment with warfarin. Bleeding rates were simliar warfarin at 60 and 80 milligrams, said Ezekowitz, who led the study. Side affects included diarrhea and nausea.
The Phase 2 study tested the medicine in patients with atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder that afflicts some 2.5 million Americans and carries the risk of blood clots that can lead to a stroke.
Warfarin, a half-century old workhorse anticoagulant from Bristol-Myers Squibb and generic companies, effectively prevents such clots. But patients need regular blood checks and frequent dose changes to prevent life-threatening clots or bleeding episodes.
After decades of frustration in […]
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