This Week’s Biotech Highlights

It was a slimming week in the world of biotech.

Orexigen’s obesity drug, Contrave, was accepted for FDA review. Contrave joins weight-loss medicines from Arena and Vivus in the FDA hopper. Interestingly, all three are still seeking marketing partners, but there is a very real possibility that there will be an FDA-approved weight loss drug on the market soon.

Patients aren’t the only ones dropping weight. Amorfix dropped its vCJD program this week, and its CEO and 5 others are out as well. The company founder is back, along with the ProMIS rational drug design program.

Only The Cross-Border Biotech Blog is putting on weight. A new contributor, Wayne Schnarr, joined this week, bringing 30 years of industry experience and a fourth Ph.D. to the blog.


  1. Given that the amounts of each drug are published, what would stop someone from obtaining these amounts of each drug and mixing them together. One could obtain prescriptions for each and get generic versions mix them, and save alot of money. I am not so sure that Sustained Release formulas that they claim are used would produce more weightloss than Immediate Release. This practice however would be considered a no no.