8 years af­ter its OK, Ei­sai yanks its flail­ing obe­si­ty drug from the mar­ket af­ter FDA flagged high­er can­cer rate

CAMEL­LIA-TI­MI 61 was sup­posed to be the tri­al that would re­solve the FDA’s con­cerns about Belviq as Eisa in­ves­ti­ga­tors showed that the weight loss drug didn’t in­crease in­ci­dences of car­dio­vas­cu­lar events. In­stead, it un­earthed new is­sues that’s now led to its demise.

At reg­u­la­tors’ re­quest, Ei­sai said it’s with­draw­ing both the orig­i­nal and ex­tend­ed re­lease ver­sion of Belviq from the US mar­ket, where it earned a lit­tle more than $28 mil­lion from April to De­cem­ber 2019.

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