Acomplia to be pulled in EU
I haven’t written much lately, I know. And now I’m just giving you a news story and some links to previous blog pieces. Too bad you’re not able to cancel your subscription in anger.
It won’t be terribly surprising to those of you who’ve kept an ear to the ground in the metabolism area to learn that rimonabant (Acomplia, Sanofi-Aventis), the first marketed CB-1 receptor antagonist (actually inverse agonist) for weight loss in obesity, is getting the heave ho from pharmacy shelves in the EU. See this Bloomberg piece by Trista Kelley published today for some details of the CHMP’s decision. Rumors suggesting that this was likely have been circulating for months.
For some background on Acomplia, please see my posts of June 12, 2007, February 15, 2007, and February 18, 2006.
An industry analyst is quoted as saying that this is the death knell for Acomplia in the U.S. Actually, I think I heard the ringing quite a bit longer back. While a resurrection for Acomplia is remotely possible, I wouldn’t bet on it. In fact, if you get decent odds, bet against it.
As the psychatric adverse effects of Acomplia are likely pharmacological, i.e. mechanism-related, any other drugs in this category could suffer the same fate. Indeed, Merck recently discontinued development of its CB1 antagonist, taranabant, due to such adverse effects. Pfizer is developing CP-945,598, but I think it is reasonable to assume that poor performance of 945598 in Phase 3 is one of the reasons Pfizer recently chose to abandon its earlier-stage obesity research. Note the word assume in the prior sentence; I honestly have no idea whether that is true. I’m not aware of any other CB1 anatagonists in the latter phases of development.
November 7th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
[...] recently reported on Sanofi-Aventis’ decision to pull rimonabant from EU shelves. Since then, S-A has [...]