While You Were at AHA

Well, the big prasugrel v clopidogrel showdown went down pretty much how observers expected it would: Lilly's prasugrel has the edge in efficacy--cutting heart attacks by 24% over Bristol/Sanofi's Plavix--but comes with an increased risk of bleeding. The press release is here. The WSJ covers the news here. We'll probably have more on this later.

• In other AHA news, Integrilin: a little jab'll do ya. Probably not great news for Schering-Plough, which, unsurprisingly, did not fund the study that suggested angioplasty patients do just as well with a significantly smaller dose of the drug.


• The New York Times chronicles Pfizer's fight to protect its Lipitor franchise from incursion by generic simvastatin. As the Financial Times pointed out last week, AstraZeneca has its own simvastatin-induced challenges with its blockbuster statin Crestor.


• GSK's gepirone antidepressant received a non-approvable letter from FDA. This is the third time FDA rejected gepirone, previously under development at Akzo Nobel (Organon), so not exactly a shocker.


• A study in Nature published on Sunday describes a new lung cancer target. Mutations in NKX2-1, which controls the activity of alveoli, may be responsible for up to 12% of lung cancers, according to researchers led by Matthew Meyerson of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute. Reuters has the story.


• The Boston Globe looks at MIT professor Lenny Guarente's dormant relationship with Elixir Pharmaceuticals, the about-to-go-public company he founded in 1999, and his potential relationship with Elixir competitor Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.