De-risking obesity strategies

Although an FDA advisory committee's negative vote on sanofi-aventis Group's Zimulti rimonabant signals a general increase in scrutiny of side effects resulting from centrally acting compounds in non-psychotropic indications, other companies in the space believe the concerns are largely specific to rimonabant.

Specifically, Zimulti acts on a target that is ubiquitous in the brain, is in a poorly characterized pathway and has a narrow therapeutic index. According to the other players, compounds with different characteristics shouldn't run into the same regulatory issues. ...