Medtronic Shares Fall on Questions About Stent
By REUTERS
Published: October 16, 2008
Shares of the medical device maker Medtronic fell Thursday after a study showed that its new drug-coated stent was associated with more heart attacks and blood clots than a rival stent made by Johnson & Johnson.
Results from the study, which included more than 2,000 patients, showed that heart patients who received the Medtronic device, called Endeavor, had more heart attacks and blood clots and needed repeat procedures more often than those treated with the Johnson & Johnson stent, known as Cypher.
There was no difference in death rates, however, according to the study, called Sort Out III — which was sponsored by Johnson & Johnson and presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics meeting in Washington.
A Medtronic spokesman, Joe McGrath, said the study was at odds with every other study that has been done.
“The data are also short-term,” he said in a statement. “At nine months, it’s premature to draw any meaningful conclusions about a difference between Cypher and Endeavor.”
“Sort Out III at nine months has no bearing on what matters most to patients with coronary artery disease — long-term freedom from adverse events and long-term freedom from repeat procedures,” he added.
In a statement, Dr. Campbell Rogers, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson’s cardiovascular unit, the Cordis Corporation, said, “The breadth of clinical safety and efficacy data and the long-term patient outcomes associated with the Cypher stent are completely unmatched by the competition, and this gap continues to widen.”
A Leerink Swann analyst, Rick Wise, said he thought the market had overreacted to the data.
He noted that the study did not directly compare the two devices and that the registries raised questions about, among other things, patient complexity and optimal use of anticlotting drugs, both of which are crucial variables in driving adverse events.
David Lewis, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, characterized the results as a “modest negative” for Medtronic, which already is struggling to defend its market share.
Drug-coated stents are tiny wire-mesh tubular devices that are implanted in diseased vessels to prop them open. The drug coating aims at keeping vessels from reclogging.
Medtronic shares closed were off about 2 percent, to close at $40.01.
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