Independent Stent registry shows Taxus Stent to be effective

By Angela McDaniels

Seattle, Oct. 25 - Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. and its corporate partner, Boston Scientific, said interim results from the independent, multi-center Stent registry further demonstrate the efficacy and safety of Boston Scientific's Taxus Express(2) paclitaxel-eluting coronary stent system among patients with blocked coronary arteries.

Additionally, an analysis of data revealed a numerical trend favoring the Taxus stent over Johnson & Johnson's Cypher sirolimus-eluting stent system in reducing major adverse cardiovascular events and target vessel revascularization, Angiotech said.

The interim results were presented at the annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics

symposium in Washington, D.C.

"The present study shows that Taxus stents are being implanted in patients who are slightly older, have higher lesion risk and somewhat smaller vessels than patients receiving Cypher stents," said Charles Simonton, M.D., chairman of the executive steering committee for the Stent group.

"Based on data collected so far, paclitaxel- and sirolimus-eluting stents demonstrate similar efficacy and safety overall at nine months. When you adjust the two groups to account for the higher complexity level of the Taxus stent arm, results favor the Taxus stent, but without statistically significant differences between the two stents," he added.

Late clinical outcomes trend numerically in favor of paclitaxel as compared to sirolimus, including death (2.1 vs. 2.7), myocardial infarction (1.8 vs. 2.2), target vessel revascularization (3.4 vs. 4.2), and major adverse cardiovasular events (6.8 vs. 7.9), Angiotech said. In addition, both the Taxus and Cypher stents showed low rates of thrombosis that are consistent with results seen in bare-metal stents.

Stent (Strategic Transcatheter Evaluation of New Therapies) is the first U.S., multi-center, prospective registry initiated to evaluate the long-term efficacy and safety of paclitaxel- and sirolimus-eluting coronary stents. Eight coronary interventional centers in the United States with 3,758 participating patients are included in the registry.

Vancouver, B.C.-based Angiotech is a specialty pharmaceutical company that develops combinations of pharmaceutical compounds with medical devices and biomaterials to both create novel solutions for poorly addressed disease states and improve surgical outcomes.

Boston Scientific is based in Natick, Mass. and develops medical devices. It acquired rights from Angiotech to use paclitaxel to coat its coronary Stent products and has co-exclusive rights to other vascular and non-vascular products.

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