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Users Fear that Lymphoma Drugs Will Disappear
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Bill Rastetter, Ph.D., was brimming with optimism.
It was January 2003, and the Idec Pharmaceuticals CEO was touting his drug Zevalin (90Y-labeled ibritumomab) at a San Francisco investors’ conference. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had recently approved Zevalin for the treatment of relapsed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), the fifth most common cancer in the country. Initial Zevalin sales were low, but Rastetter expected the drug to take off just like another slow starter, rituximab, approved 5 years earlier.
"We will see the same pattern with Zevalin," Rastetter said, "as this new technology is also tried and then adopted."
But Rastetter was wrong. Over the last 4 years, sales of Zevalin, a radiolabeled antibody, improved little and are now declining. A second lymphoma radiopharmaceutical, Bexxar (131I-labeled tositumomab), approved in June 2003, has sold even less than Zevalin. Last year Biogen Idec, as Zevalin's owner is now known, announced its
The Underuse Mystery
Running Out of Time?
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