Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

The expiration of exclusivity period for Sanofi Aventis’ blood thinner Lovenox has expired, moving Momenta Pharmaceutical Inc. one step closer to gaining approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to manufacture and market is generic Lovenox, M-Enoxaparin, according to Momenta’s first quarter 2009 Earnings Call.

Anticoagulants are often administered to patients before undergoing some surgeries and medical procedures to reduce the risk of life-threatening blood clots. Lovenox has been touted as an effective replacement for the blood thinner heparin in patients undergoing abdominal surgery.

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Meet Allie Beaty. As a diabetic, her life depends on insulin. She wants to make a difference for others like her, make “the world safer for people with diabetes,” she says on her Web page, Alliesvoice.com. So Allie established a diabetes think group and shares ”Love Diabetes” videos on YouTube to push her mission.

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A lack of communication among hospital staff lead to an inappropriate injection of heparin that lead to the death of an Australian man earlier this year, according to Hawke’s Bay Today.

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Five pharmaceutical companies are working on new medications to treat blood clots, also known as thrombosis, according to The Wall Street Journal. Thrombosis is a serious problem affecting nearly 900,000 Americans each year, and resulting in nearly 300,00 deaths annually. Currently, heparin and Vitamin K antagonists are the only two principal treatments for blood clots.

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There has been yet another report of heparin being pulled off the market for fear it may harm people. This week, French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis recalled the remaining batches of its heparin medicine distributed before May 2008, Lovenox, based on a recommendation by French drug regulator Afssaps.

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Robert Linhardt, a scientist at Troy, New York-based Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is leading a team of researchers who have developed a fully synthetic version of the blood thinner heparin. While the group has only produced a few milligrams of the substance, it is the first step in eliminating the risk of contamination currently associated with the drug, which is manufactured primarily from pig intestines.

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