Author: PharmaTimes

A new US government-sponsored clinical trial is set to begin later this year, pitting ImClone’s Erbitux (cetuximab) against Genentech’s Avastin (bevacizumab) in patients with a new colorectal cancer diagnosis, according to Industry reports.

UK biotechnology company, Xenova, received a significant boost late last week after it said that it had signed a deal potentially worth as much as £44 million pounds with Oxxon Therapeutics for its gene delivery system to be used in oncology and infectious diseases.

Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology company, has sent a letter to doctors to alert them to the fact that higher doses of drugs similar to its anaemia offering, Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa), were linked with an increased risk of blood clots – and even death – in clinical trials.

The British Medical Journal has given a cautious welcome to the announcement by the world’s pharmaceutical companies that they will make results from clinical trials of new drugs publicly available, regardless of the outcome [[07/01/05a]].

Sanofi-Aventis says that its Menactra vaccine has won US Food and Drug Administration approval to protect adolescents and adults aged 11-55 against meningococcal meningitis – a potentially fatal infection. Menactra vaccine is the first quadrivalent conjugate vaccine licensed in the US for the prevention of infection from four types of meningococcal disease.