Biotech Values

[DewDiligence]

Abbott’s Disappearing Stent Has Visible Promise

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/03/13/abbotts-search-for-a-disappearing-stent

›March 13, 2009, 5:13 PM ET
By Shirley S. Wang

Abbott hit the ground running in the stent market last year, as its Xience V was approved by the FDA in July and became the market leader in a matter of months. (Boston Scientific sells the same stent under the brand name Promus.)

Now comes news about the company’s next-gen effort: a “fully bioabsorbable” stent that’s made of a corn-derived material also used to make dissolvable sutures. The idea is that the stent is inserted to prop open a clogged blood vessel, then gets reabsorbed into the vessel once its no longer needed.

Results from a 30-patient study of the stent were published yesterday in the Lancet, after first being presented at a conference in October 2008.

The study was small, but the data suggested the stent was safe after two years time. There were no cases of blood clots forming inside the stent, a dangerous but rare complication. Also, the stent appeared fully absorbed after two years and the blood vessels seemed able to contract and expand like they would naturally.

This is still early days. It’s not clear how the new stent works in comparison to existing stents since the trial wasn’t designed for a head-to-head comparison. And the company will need lots more data to prove whether the stent is safe and effective. Abbott is hoping for a 2012 launch in Europe and later in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Abbott’s rivals are working on their own new things. Johnson & Johnson, for example, is working on a stent called Nevo that also has a bioabsorbable drug layer, that puts out an anti-clotting drug for about six months, then dissolves leaving a bare metal stent. In 2007, J&J pulled a smiliar product, called CoStar [the product JNJ acquired from Conor in one of its few really bad M&A deals], that was already on the market in some countries. Data showed it wasn’t as good as an existing product.‹