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Biotech / Medical : Pharma News Only (pfe,mrk,wla, sgp, ahp, bmy, lly) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mel Spivak who wrote (929)	10/15/1998 6:18:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1722

Rhone-Poulenc Ends Development of New Oral Anti-Platelet Drug Bloomberg News October 15, 1998, 5:29 p.m. ET Rhone-Poulenc Ends Development of New Oral Anti-Platelet Drug Washington, Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Rhone-Poulenc SA said it is abandoning efforts to develop an experimental heart drug called Klerval because patients would have to take excessive amounts of the drug in order for it to be effective. A member of a hot new class of experimental heart drugs called glycoprotein 2b3a inhibitors, Klerval would likely have been used to treat patients who have had heart attacks or are at risk for them. Other companies including Monsanto Co., Merck & Co., and Roche Holding AG are developing similar oral GP 2b3a drugs. The drug works by inhibiting the activity of platelets, the red blood cells responsible for clotting. However, a patient would have to take such massive doses of Klerval in order for it to be fully effective that the product would be ''economically unfeasible'' the company said in a release. Rhone-Poulenc said it will redirect the money it had earmarked for the development of the drug -- which had completed only two of three phases of testing required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- towards other projects including work to find new uses for its lead drug, Lovenox. American depositary receipts in the French drugmaker Rhone- Poulenc fell 5/8 to close at 38 5/8 today. Currently the standard long-term therapy for the heart patients who might one day take the GP 2b3a drugs is common aspirin or heparin, both of which inhibit the formation of blood clots that can cause heart attacks. Similar Intravenous Drugs The experimental oral drugs are chemically similar to new intravenous drugs now on the market including Centocor Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co.'s ReoPro, Merck & Co.'s Aggrastat and Cor Therapeutics Inc. and Schering-Plough Corp.'s Integrilin. Roche is also in late-stage development with a similar intravenous drug called Lamifiban. ReoPro, Aggrastat and Integrilin are used for emergency treatment of patients including those with the crushing chest pains that may precede a heart attack, and for those who are undergoing an artery-clearing procedure called balloon angioplasty. The new oral treatments are expected to be used for weeks and months following heart attack treatment and thus won't compete with the intravenous drugs. --Kristin Reed in Washington (202) 624-1820 with reporting by