Tests Continue for Amgen Blood-Clotting Drug

Amgen Inc., a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, plans to begin the second of three rounds of human tests for a blood-clotting medication for cancer patients within the next several months, according to Gordon Binder, chairman and chief executive.

And preliminary tests are going well on the company’s widely publicized anti-obesity treatment, Binder told a financial conference in San Francisco late last month.

The blood-clotting drug, known as megakaryocyte growth and development factor, or MGDF, is designed to stimulate development of platelets following chemotherapy.

Platelets are tiny particles in the blood that are essential for clotting. They are destroyed by the medication used to treat cancer patients.

MGDF is currently undergoing Phase I trials in humans. Before the federal Food and Drug Administration approves a drug for domestic sale, it must complete two additional rounds of tests.

Binder, speaking at a conference in San Francisco sponsored by Montgomery Securities, said there have been no setbacks in the drug’s trials so far. “We have to test a number of dose levels,” he noted.

Amgen’s key products are two blood-growth stimulants, Epogen and Neupogen. Epogen spurs the growth of red blood cells while Neupogen stimulates the growth of white cells.

Some analysts who follow Amgen have recently become concerned that European sales of Epogen, which is used to treat patients on dialysis, may be threatened by the marketing of a comparable product by Genetics Institute Inc., a unit of American Home Products Corp.

Binder said he is not concerned about losing market share in Europe. He claimed that Amgen holds the basic patent for the product being sold by Genetics Institute.

Amgen’s chief executive reported that animal studies of the company’s treatment for obesity, the so-called “fat gene,” are going well.

In addition to causing obese mice to lose weight, the drug has cured diabetes in some mice, he said.