Attention: Drug Used In Cancer May Cause Death

According to latest survey conducted by pipelinereview.com, Epoetin alfa (Epogen/ESPO/Procrit/Eprex) marketed by Amgen, Kirin & Johnson & Johnson mainly used in renal and cancer anaemia remains number one top selling biological drug for the year 2007 with the annual sale of about US$ 5,764 million compared to US$ 6,024 million last year(2006).

Recently clinical trial studies done on anti-anemic drugs, marketed by Amgen and Johnson & Johnson revels increase risk of death among the cancer patients. The conflict is that whether the higher risk of death is due to blood clots or drug which is a synthetic form of a natural hormone called erythropoietin directly stimulates the growth and spread of tumor.

First option for US-FDA is to ban the drug for the treatment of anaemia of cancer or changing the label requirements to match the medicare policy.Last year US-FDA ordered strong warnings on the drug label, after this medicare sharply restricted reimbursement for this drug by medicare.

If drug is unauthorized or restricted for the use in anaemia due to the cancer, it is expected that companies has to face loss of near about 1.5 – 2.0 billion USD per year. Recently eight clinical trials conducted showed that the drug might make cancer worse or reduce patients lives but all eight trials involved high dose of the drug and does not give full proof information whether the drug is dangerous in the dose prescribed for cancer patients.