I ZING THE BODY ELECTRIC

摘要

Last year pharmaceutical giant Aventis was racing to develop a competitor to Evista, a hot-selling drug from Eli Lilly. Evista's big advantage is that it doesn't rely on estrogen or other hormones to treat osteoporosis, a bone-thinning disease common in women after menopause. Other drugmakers were eager to find their own versions of Evista, which belongs to a new class of drugs called selective estrogen receptor modulators (SERMs). Aventis was already in early human trials with a SERM, but there seemed to be a potential side effect: hypertrophy of the endo-metrium of the uterus, which could lead to cancer. The drugmaker was poised to move the compound into additional drug trials, testing many more subjects, so failure would be costly―not only in resources but also because it would expose hun-dreds of women to the risk of cancer.