Last night, Amgen and UCB Pharma announced that although their osteoporosis drug, romosozumab, prevented fractures of the vertebrae in post-menopausal women, it also may have increased the risk of heart attacks by 30%. The situation could echo that of Merck and its osteoporosis drug odanacatib, which lingered in the company's pipeline for years after safety issues emerged before it was finally killed. Shares of Amgen are down 3%, those of UCB are down 15%, and shares of Radius Health, a biotech that is launching a competing osteoporosis drug, are up 16%. It's far better to figure out that a medicine won't make it early, before all that money is spent. According to Kristin Neese, an Amgen spokeswoman, the DeCode approach showed that patients with sclerostin mutations were very fracture-resistant, with high bone mineral density.

Source: Forbes May 22, 2017 13:39 UTC