Boehringer wins approval in anti-clotting drug race

Boehringer Ingelheim has stolen a march on arch rival Bayer, winning European marketing approval for a new anti-clotting agent--Pradaxa--that is likely to provide Lovenox with considerable competition. Boehringer's pill formulation is likely to be attractive compared to the injection of Lovenox, which earned €2.6 billion for Sanofi-Aventis last year. Bayer, meanwhile, has been advancing Xarelto for this market, which it forecasts will garner more than $2 billion a year. Pradaxa gets its first rollout in Germany and the UK in the next few weeks.

This first license for Pradaxa "marks an important advance and milestone in anticoagulation therapy and the prevention of potentially fatal thrombi," says Boehringer R&D chief Andreas Barner.    

- here's the release on the approval
- read the story in PharmaTimes

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