Bitter rivalry

The abrupt postponement of this week's FDA advisory committee meetings to review BLAs for two Fabry disease therapies is a casualty of the intense competition between Transkaryotic Therapies Inc. and Genzyme General to be first on the U.S. market.

Although Kathleen Reedy, executive secretary of the Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee, said the postponement was made because of "administrative complications," other FDA officials privately said that TKTX had raised conflict-of-interest objections about the panel...