How the (Not so) Mighty Have Fallen
Posted by Osagie Obasogie October 2, 2008
Biopolitical Times
Just three years ago, NitroMed (makers of BiDil, the first FDA-approved race specific medicine) was heralded as a promising pharmaceutical company with a business model for BiDil that led some analysts to predict sales of between $500 million and $1 billion by 2010.
Yet, BiDil’s fortunes have swung drastically in the other direction. Amongst sluggish sales and massive layoffs, Nitromed was recently notified by NASDAQ that its stock risks delisting since its price has been below the $1 minimum for over 30 straight days.
What does NitroMed’s slow but steady demise mean for future endeavors into race based medicine? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why BiDil failed. Some say it was overpriced compared to the availability of its constitutive generic components at a fraction of BiDil’s cost. Others suggest that the fraught history between Blacks and the medical community may have led many African Americans to think twice about taking any medication claimed to be designed just for them.
Regardless of the reason, it seems that even BiDil’s strongest supporters are starting to rethink their approach. One of them, Dr. Keith Ferdinand, told the Newark Star Ledger that “he now wonders whether the smarter strategy would have been to market BiDil as a general heart failure drug and let the data about its particular effectiveness in blacks ‘stand on its own.’”
Not a bad idea.
Yet, BiDil’s fortunes have swung drastically in the other direction. Amongst sluggish sales and massive layoffs, Nitromed was recently notified by NASDAQ that its stock risks delisting since its price has been below the $1 minimum for over 30 straight days.
What does NitroMed’s slow but steady demise mean for future endeavors into race based medicine? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why BiDil failed. Some say it was overpriced compared to the availability of its constitutive generic components at a fraction of BiDil’s cost. Others suggest that the fraught history between Blacks and the medical community may have led many African Americans to think twice about taking any medication claimed to be designed just for them.
Regardless of the reason, it seems that even BiDil’s strongest supporters are starting to rethink their approach. One of them, Dr. Keith Ferdinand, told the Newark Star Ledger that “he now wonders whether the smarter strategy would have been to market BiDil as a general heart failure drug and let the data about its particular effectiveness in blacks ‘stand on its own.’”
Not a bad idea.