(Continued from Part I)
Eight people who, for all we know today, may have fully relapsed and died already.
Statistically, I would expect as good or better results from a placebo.
If CTI is so confident in the safety and efficacy of pixantrone, if they are so certain of this drug's place in the growing pantheon of cancer treatments, why are they showing such an unwillingness to run a new trial? It's not believable for these companies to bitch and moan about the costs of these trials, not in the wake of brilliant investigative journalism like Merrill Goozner's "The $800 Million Pill", which showed definitively that not only are most new molecules developed by publically funded research, but that most of the expenses tied to new drugs are spent in marketing it.
I remember typing out this quick news item about pixantrone's chances for approval from the FDA panel. There was nothing 'in the air' that suggested caution. Probably because CTI leaked not a word about how sorry their data was.
Once it came out, I let my feelings be known in "The Other 70 Percent". The drug has been tested on so few people that it's next to impossible to know whether it's either safe or effective. I suppose CTI thinks it's acceptable to let that information come out after the drug has been on the market for a couple years and left a swath of dead and/or disappointed in its wake. Who cares right, as long as the shareholders see some dividends.
Predictably, CTI is throwing pixantrone at the cancer wall, including HER-2 negative breast cancer and using it against other NHLs in combination with a known cancer winner, Rituxan.
In sum, this public performance by CTI shows just how cynical a biotech company can possibly be.
