The Change Mariner

Pfizer to Buy Maker of Promising Cholesterol Drug

New York Times:

Pfizer, the maker of Lipitor, the leading drug to reduce harmful blood cholesterol, announced yesterday that it would pay $1.3 billion for Esperion Therapeutics, a small company that has pioneered a new series of drugs that mimic or enhance so-called good cholesterol.

Pfizer already held the first bidding rights to market one of the drugs, but in the end decided to buy the company, executives of both companies said yesterday in interviews.

In November, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study reporting that one of the Esperion drugs developed to mimic high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, or H.D.L., significantly reduced the levels in arteries of cholesterol-rich fatty acids called plaque.

"The study reported the drug decreased the plaque significantly," said Dr. H. Bryan Brewer Jr., the chief for the molecular disease branch at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "The interesting fact is that it takes years and years to develop hardening of the arteries - and within six weeks of using this drug, you see a significant change."

In the trial, seriously ill heart patients who were given five weekly injections of the drug showed an average reduction in plaque of 4.2 percent. Patients given a salt solution showed a slight increase in plaque.