Buy Zimulti (rimonabant) gets the thumbs down from FDA advisory panel
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis suffered a stinging stock market setback Thursday after a US panel said the company’s obesity treatment was unsafe and should not be marketed in the United States. Shares in the French company plunged 6.33 percent to 63.00 euros in closing deals on a Paris market that was 1.90 percent stronger.The 14 doctors on an advisory committee for the US Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Wednesday against allowing Sanofi’s diet drug to go on the US market, FDA spokeswoman Sandy Walsh said Wednesday.(buy zimulti)
During the FDA advisory committee hearing, several experts said the treatment appeared to be linked to an increase in suicidal thoughts among patients without a history of depression.The decision also amounted to a “unanimous 14 no vote about the safety of the drug,” the spokeswoman added.The FDA, which is not obliged to follow the panel’s recommendations but usually does, is expected to issue a decision on July 26.Analysts said a negative decision would mean losses of more than 2.5 billion euros (3.3 billion dollars,order cheap zimulti rimonabant) a year for the world’s fourth biggest pharmaceutical company.
Obesity is increasingly a central public health concern in industrialised countries and therefore a potentially huge market for pharmaceutical treatments.Often presented as a “miracle pill,” Acomplia, which treats obesity and related conditions like diabetes and high cholesterol, was developed in the 1990s by researchers led by Gerard Le Fur, who has been general director of the company since the beginning of the year.
The anti-obesity drug, which Sanofi-Aventis planned to sell in the United States under the brand name Generic Zimulti, is currently authorised in 37, mainly European Union, countries and sold in 18.The US market is a key outlet but Sanofi has encountered a series of pitfalls there.The group has never communicated its commercial forecasts for the United States, limiting itself to saying it was counting on three billion euros in worldwide sales.Sanofi-Aventis said it would continue to work closely with the FDA to address the concerns raised by the expert panel. A Sanofi spokesman in Paris declined further comment.
The company had hoped to get US approval in 2006 and planned to put it on the market shortly afterwards,But the FDA, which asked for more and more information on the drug, proved to be tougher than the company had expected.The US ruling could have a knock-on effect as the European Medicines Agency (EMEA,buy cheap zimulti), a European body for the evaluation of medicinal products, said Thursday it would try to determine if there were any “new information” regarding Acomplia.A spokesman said that the situation would likely be raised at an EMEA committee meeting from June 18-21.Some analysts said Sanofi could now be obliged to review ongoing clinical trials.Sanofi has already taken generic pharmaceutical producers to court in the United States for allegedly breaching its patent protection for the anticoagulants Lovenox and Plavix.It earns 2.4 billion euros a year from Lovenox and 2.2 billion euros from Plavix.The company has appealed a first court ruling which went against it. If it also loses its appeal it will permanently lose its patent protection for Lovenox.But industry analysts said they expected Sanofi to prevail in the case.

