Study Questions Effectiveness of Biotech Drug

The heart attack drug TPA, the first “blockbuster” product of the biotechnology industry, was dealt a blow Thursday when an Italian study found that it worked no better than a much cheaper alternative.

The study compared the effect of TPA and the drug streptokinase on 20,000 heart attack patients in Europe, most of them in Italy.

The study found that patients treated with streptokinase, which costs one-tenth as much as TPA, had a slightly lower mortality rate, 8.5%, than patients treated with TPA, 8.9%.

TPA’s developer and manufacturer, Genentech Inc. of South San Francisco, immediately criticized the study as “inconclusive” because it did not evaluate TPA’s effectiveness when used with another drug, heparin, that is commonly administered at the same time in the United States.

Genentech’s stock dropped $1.125 to $26.125 before trading was halted late at 3:06 p.m. EST. The company had said it anticipated bad news from the study because of the way it was performed.

Besides the lower mortality rate for streptokinase, the study found that only 1% of patients treated with streptokinase suffered a stroke, compared to 1.3% for TPA.