Arena's diet drug castoff deemed safe in study; UK price overseers say breakthrough CAR-T Yescarta is too expensive
→ Arena Pharmaceuticals never could make much money from their weight loss drug Belviq (lorcaserin). But at least researchers have good reason to believe it’s relatively safe. A long-running safety study concluded that there was “no statistical difference in the proportion of patients with a major adverse cardiovascular event between the group that received lorcaserin (6.1 percent) versus in those that received placebo (6.2 percent) at study completion.” And the drug did deliver a consistent benefit for patients, with the drug group losing an average of 9.3 pounds compared to 3 pounds in the placebo group. Arena dropped out of the flagging weight loss drug field more than 18 months ago, handing over rights to Eisai.
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