Since August, shareholders of Forest Laboratories
What could get shares to go back in the right direction would be FDA approval of Nebivolol, a selective beta 1-blocker for treating hypertension. On May 1, Forest announced that its licensing partner, Mylan Laboratories
As the six-month mark approaches, I looked at the prospects for approval, and it is pretty good. Last month analyst Robert Uhl of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group
It's true that 2007 has been one of the toughest years in recent times to receive FDA approvals on NDAs. But based on the clinical trial results published in Journal of Clinical Hypertension, I would say this drug is good to go. In the double-blind, placebo-controlled study that enlisted more than 900 subjects, Nebivolol demonstrated the ability to significantly reduce sitting diastolic and systolic blood pressure with side effects that were mild and minimal.
The verdict should be in any day now. An approval is important for Forest; its biggest seller, antidepressant Lexapro, goes off patent in 2012, and the company recently had to fend of a challenge by Teva Pharmaceuticals
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