Not a slam dunk
Not a slam dunk When the discovery of megakaryocyte growth and development factor (MGDF) was announced in June 1994, Wall Street immediately assumed that the course of development for the platelet booster, also known as thrombopoietin (TPO), would be a smooth ride. But not all proteins are easy to develop into drugs, and some can't be turned into drugs at all.
The first official bump in the road to development has come from Amgen Inc. (AMGN, Thousand Oaks, Calif.), which dropped work on MGDF for a small indication, acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The company also said that while work is continuing on another small indication, PBPC (peripheral blood progenitor cell) transplantation, the probability of success is not considered high. While those indications aren't large, they had provided a potential fast track to market...