Most popular news headlines for Thursday, August 14 2014

The most-clicked news item for Thursday was “Why Amgen, Inc.’s Kyprolis FOCUS Failure Is a Big Deal.”  In this Motley Fool piece, the author details why he believes the recent clinical trial failure of Amgen’s multiple myeloma treatment will be important - namely, that the most important outcome measure, survival rate, did not beat the control.

In the second most popular news item Thursday, Medical Marketing and Media discusses AbbVie’s recent foray into the orphan drugs space through both its Shire acquisition and the orphan drug designation in both the US and Europe for ABT-414.  Read “AbbVie makes inroads in orphan drugs” for more.

The third most-clicked link was “AstraZeneca starts final-stage tests on severe asthma drug.”  AZ is starting its final-stage Phase III trials for tralokinumab, which has already showed promising results in mid-stage trials earlier this year.  The drug was developed by MedImmune, which AZ acquired in 2007.

The fourth most popular news link was “FDA to Hold Workshop on Developing Drugs for Female Sex Problems.” This WSJ Pharmalot article discusses the somewhat unusual move by the FDA to schedule the two day workshop this fall.  It appears to be in response to growing criticism from customer advocacy groups and others that treatments for female sexual issues have not been approved at the same rate as those for men.