Yet another experimental drug heavily touted by Pfizer Inc., with research operations in Groton, has foundered in advanced testing, raising worries about productivity problems at the world’s biggest drugmaker, the Associated Press reports.
Safety problems with potential osteoarthritis treatment tanezumab, quietly disclosed Wednesday evening, on Thursday triggered a drop in Pfizer shares and a burst of notes to investors from analysts concerned about the trend.
“This is the second negative for (Pfizer) this week,” after the company pulled a cancer drug off the market, Miller Tabak & Co. analyst Les Funtleyder wrote. “We continue to have reservations about (the company’s) R&D capabilities and this announcement only confirms those.”
That’s after a highly anticipated Alzheimer’s drug flamed out in March, a failure doctors called a big setback because many hoped it might be the first treatment to stop or reverse the mind-robbing disease.
This Monday, New-York Pfizer said it was pulling bone cancer drug Mylotarg off the market 10 years after it got accelerated U.S. approval, because recent research found the drug increased chances of dying in patients also getting chemotherapy.
Late Wednesday — at the urging of the Food and Drug Administration — Pfizer said it was immediately suspending worldwide testing of tanezumab in patients with osteoarthritis, a common condition in which the cartilage lining joints deteriorates. Pfizer cited “a small number of reports” of patients who received the injected pain treatment having their osteoarthritis worsen, leading to joint replacement.
Just last week, two small companies developing other pain drugs in collaboration with Pfizer announced a total of three drugs, for osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, weren’t reducing pain as much as expected.
That all adds up to significant potential pain for Pfizer shareholders, who also have seen five late-stage studies of different cancer drugs fail in the last 18 months. In addition, Pfizer has sharply reduced its prized dividend, to help pay for its $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth last October.
