UTHR's stable gets thinner

The failure of United Therapeutics Corp.'s beraprost oral prostacyclin analog in a Phase III trial leaves the company banking on the pending approval of its injectable Remodulin prostacyclin analog to take it to profitability, while it looks to deploy its $180 million in cash to beef up its clinical pipeline with compounds in mid- to late-stage development.

Last week, UTHR (Silver Spring, Md.) said it expects to halt development of beraprost for intermittent claudication (pain when walking) from peripheral vascular disease (PVD) after data from a 750-patient U.S. Phase III trial failed to confirm positive results from a European Phase III trial conducted by Hoechst Marion Roussel, now part of Aventis S.A. (AVE, Strasbourg, France) (see B12). AVE holds European rights to beraprost from Toray Industries Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), which granted U.S. and Canadian rights to UTHR. ...