FDA Panel Scrutinizes Safety of Anti-Anemia Drugs

Extract

Commercials on American television that feature cancer patients made anemic—and therefore miserably tired—by chemotherapy and whose energy is restored by the drug Procrit are hard to escape. Given by injection, this drug is a genetically engineered version of erythropoietin, the human hormone—often referred to as EPO or epoetin—that corrects anemia by stimulating the production of red blood cells that ferry oxygen to the body's tissues.

Procrit is made by Amgen and marketed by Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ortho Biotech Products. It reduces the number of transfusions that cancer patients may need without, it was believed, posing a risk that it will make their tumors recur or progress. The same goes for Amgen's Aranesp, which is Procrit's only competitor in the United States and is also a genetically engineered version of erythropoietin given by injection. (It is chemically similar to Procrit but has been molecularly altered to be longer acting.) Such is the demand for both drugs that their annual sales run to billions of dollars.