Speaking of LGND's pipeline, here's an old AP story that mentions TSE424:
Women Find Themselves Courted By Pharmaceutical Firms
Copyright =A9 1998 Nando.net
Copyright =A9 1998 The Associated Press
* Top 10 killers of women
NEW YORK (January 8, 1998 3:24 p.m. EST nando.net) -- The
nation's drug makers have made a potentially lucrative discovery -- women.
Pharmaceutical companies are developing 372 medicines to treat menopause,
breast cancer and other conditions that affect women, according to a study
to be released Friday by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of
America, a drug industry trade group.
That marks a steady increase from 263 drugs in development in 1991, when
many companies produced drugs tested only on men. Now corporate scientists
are busily honing innovations in birth control and osteoporosis and
incontinence treatments.
Why the heightened attention? Women live longer and buy more health care
than men, and they have deeper pockets than their foremothers.
Women account for two-thirds of the 44 million hospital procedures performed
each year, 61 percent of the 70 million annual doctor visits, 75 percent of
nursing home residents and 59 percent of prescription drug purchases,
according to securities firm Smith Barney. And they live seven years longer
on average, during which they remain drug buyers.
Bernadine Healy, former secretary of the National Institutes of Health,
remembered a 1980s pharmaceutical executive who described women's health as
a niche market.
"This tells me that the pharmaceutical industry has gotten the joke: Women
are the industry," said Healy, now dean of the Ohio State University College
of Medicine. "It may have taken us to the last decade of the century to
figure it out, but I am delighted."
Pharmaceutical makers now recognize that women have more buying power. Women
are closing the salary gap, going from earning 60 cents for every dollar men
earned in 1980 to 71 cents now, according to the U.S. Census figures.
"They're living longer, and I think pharmaceutical companies certainly
realize that," said Barry Komm, a director at Wyeth-Ayerst's Women's Health
Research Institute. "And it's an area, especially the menopausal population,
where there just aren't a lot of drugs to meet the need."
The industry list of drugs under development includes drugs in clinical
trials that target ailments that affect only women, affect women
disproportionately or are among the top 10 killers of women, such as heart
disease, cancer and diabetes.
Women have long been steady customers at the pharmacy. The nation's
best-selling drug is Wyeth-Ayerst's 50-year-old estrogen, Premarin. But
women's groups have long complained that the health care industry gives
women second-tier status.
Reproductive health problems are among the least reimbursed by insurers.
Gynecological coverage is offered by less than half of fee-for-service
insurers and only 42 percent of policies that cover women through a spouse
or father.
After women complained that drug companies were testing many of their
products -- including the female hormone estrogen -- exclusively on men, the
FDA in 1993 required drug makers to include women in testing. In August the
agency ordered companies to stop excluding women of childbearing age.
"Certainly breast cancer is a disease that went without major advances while
the incidences increased dramatically, and the medical establishment and
drug companies took that for granted," said Mary Jo Ellis Kahn, a National
Breast Cancer Coalition volunteer whose cancer has been in remission since
1989.
Breast cancer treatments are now among the most researched drugs, with 57 in
clinical trials. Heart disease -- the No. 1 killer of women -- arthritis,
breast cancer and stroke treatments are the most frequent targets.
Drug makers have also focused on new types of contraceptives, with 13 under
development, including vaginal rings, doughnut-shaped devices inserted
vaginally and that deliver contraceptive hormones for up to a year with no
daily attention. Organon Inc. has a product in late-stage trials and a
Warner-Lambert Co. rival is in early trials.
Pharmacia & Upjohn, the maker of the injectible contraceptive Depo-Provera,
has asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve Cyclo-Provera, which
combines a mixture of hormones that may reduce side effects such as
irregular bleeding.
Wyeth-Ayerst, a division of American Home Products, is working on a
successor to its Norplant implantable contraceptive, which faces suits from
50,000 women complaining of side effects.
Osteoporosis, which affects one in four women after menopause, has also
drawn drug makers' attention. Several companies are working on "designer
estrogens," which mimic estrogen's bone-saving effects without the risk of
breast cancer. The FDA last month approved the first designer estrogen, Eli
Lilly & Co.'s Evista, and 25 other osteoporosis drugs are in clinical
trials.
Meanwhile, the first drug to come out of Wyeth-Ayerst's Women's Health
Research Institute, a designer estrogen called TSE424, is expected to begin
clinical trials in March.
The drug makers' discovery of the market for women's products reflects the
latest phase of the women's movement, said Ms. Healy, who recalls being
turned down for a credit card as a young doctor in the 1960s by a bank
manager who wanted her husband to co-sign.
"What we really are seeing is women have a voice that they simply didn't
have before," she said.
By JOHN HENDREN, The Associated Press |
