The bad news just keeps flowing for Genzyme. Today, an FDA advisory panel recommended against approving the company’s application to start marketing a leukemia drug to patients over 60, saying the Cambridge, MA-based biotech giant hadn’t produced enough evidence that the drug is safe and effective for those patients. The agency isn’t required to follow such recommendations, but it usually does.
The FDA’s panel of cancer drug experts voted 9-3 that Genzyme (NASDAQ: [[ticker:GENZ]]) ought to run a larger clinical trial that randomly assigns patients in the targeted age group with acute myeloid leukemia to take clofarabine (Clolar) or another drug, according to this Reuters report.
The Genzyme drug is already approved for a smaller population, children with leukemia. But Genzyme was hoping to grow the market for the drug to include elderly patients when it paid $345 million to get clofarabine through the acquisition of Bioenvision. The drug isn’t one of Genzyme’s biggest sellers, but it has strategic importance as part of a portfolio the company is putting together to become a bigger player in the field of cancer drug development. After the panel vote, Genzyme indicated in a statement that it “remains committed” to developing clofarabine for elderly patients.
For those following the news in this summer of Genzyme’s discontent, this is part of a pattern of painful setbacks at Genzyme. The company’s Allston, MA, biotech drug factory, was struck in June with a viral contamination, which caused a shortage of Genzyme’s top-selling drug, imiglucerase (Cerezyme) for Gaucher’s disease. That’s prompted two serious competitors, U.K.-based Shire and Israel-based Protalix BioTherapeutics, to speed up their alternative drugs to the market. Protalix has now gotten FDA clearance to offer its drug to a larger number of patients in clinical trials, and today Shire said it formally filed its application with the FDA to start marketing its Gaucher’s treatment.
And as the competitors attempt to pounce during this vulnerable moment, regulators are
