Amgen (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AMGN]]), the world’s largest biotechnology company, said today that its lead experimental drug, denosumab, reached all its goals in a clinical trial of more than 2,000 women with breast cancer. Women with breast cancer often have tumors spread to their bones, and the drug, “dmab,” was able to delay the time it took for that damaging effect to occur, when compared with Novartis’ zoledronic acid (Zometa). The Amgen drug, which is also vying for FDA approval as an osteoporosis treatment, has been studied for more than a decade as a cancer drug at Amgen’s Seattle research center, as I described in a feature in October.
Author: Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
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