http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/roundup-anemia-drugs-under-assault-stem-cell-trial-moves-forward-medical-interventions-and-poor-quality-of-death-and-more/ News About Tech, Money and Innovation Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:43:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/roundup-anemia-drugs-under-assault-stem-cell-trial-moves-forward-medical-interventions-and-poor-quality-of-death-and-more/comment-page-1/#comment-515972 VentureBeat » EPO’s makers may be down, but they’re not out Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:00:38 +0000 http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/roundup-anemia-drugs-under-assault-stem-cell-trial-moves-forward-medical-interventions-and-poor-quality-of-death-and-more/#comment-515972 [...] Erythropoietin, or EPO, and its close relatives didn’t become the world’s most popular biotech drugs — at least through last year, when they pulled in sales of almost $12 billion — for nothing. On the plus side of the ledger, the anemia treatment owed its early success to the near miraculous improvement it wrought in the health of kidney-dialysis patients, who previously required numerous blood transfusions and frequently died relatively quickly anyway. On the other side, though, EPO makers, primarily Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, have long pushed hard to boost dosage and use of the drugs in a variety of situations, even when the evidence of patient benefit was weak and sometimes in the face of worrisome early signs that the drugs might actually be hurting instead of helping. (See our previous coverage here and here.) [...] [...] Erythropoietin, or EPO, and its close relatives didn’t become the world’s most popular biotech drugs — at least through last year, when they pulled in sales of almost $12 billion — for nothing. On the plus side of the ledger, the anemia treatment owed its early success to the near miraculous improvement it wrought in the health of kidney-dialysis patients, who previously required numerous blood transfusions and frequently died relatively quickly anyway. On the other side, though, EPO makers, primarily Amgen and Johnson & Johnson, have long pushed hard to boost dosage and use of the drugs in a variety of situations, even when the evidence of patient benefit was weak and sometimes in the face of worrisome early signs that the drugs might actually be hurting instead of helping. (See our previous coverage here and here.) [...]

]]> http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/roundup-anemia-drugs-under-assault-stem-cell-trial-moves-forward-medical-interventions-and-poor-quality-of-death-and-more/comment-page-1/#comment-401718 VentureBeat » How not to write about biogenerics Sat, 11 Aug 2007 00:05:18 +0000 http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/roundup-anemia-drugs-under-assault-stem-cell-trial-moves-forward-medical-interventions-and-poor-quality-of-death-and-more/#comment-401718 [...] Yesterday, the WSJ Health Blog cited a WSJ story as evidence that “biogenerics” — that is, generic versions of biotech drugs, which currently don’t exist — need to be treated with caution. Unfortunately, the blog post missed a much more important point about biogenerics, a subject that’s still widely misunderstood, thanks in part to chaff kicked up by the biotechnology industry itself. (See our previous coverage here and here.) [...] [...] Yesterday, the WSJ Health Blog cited a WSJ story as evidence that “biogenerics” — that is, generic versions of biotech drugs, which currently don’t exist — need to be treated with caution. Unfortunately, the blog post missed a much more important point about biogenerics, a subject that’s still widely misunderstood, thanks in part to chaff kicked up by the biotechnology industry itself. (See our previous coverage here and here.) [...]

]]>