June 15th, 2011
Johnson & Johnson Steps Out of the Stent Market
Larry Husten, PHD
Johnson & Johnson announced today that it is exiting the stent business. The company will discontinue development of its Nevo sirolimus-eluting stent and will end sales of its Cypher family of stents by the end of the year. The company was the manufacturer of both the first stent, the Palmaz-Schatz stent, in the 1990s and […]
May 24th, 2011
Stent BioWars: Erode or Absorb?
Richard A. Lange, MD, MBA and L. David Hillis, MD
In January 2011, we blogged about ABSORB, a bioresorbable stent, when it received CE approval for use in Europe. Drug-eluting stents (DES) are composed of a metal scaffold that is coated with a polymer containing an antiproliferative agent , which is released gradually over the weeks to months after the stent is inserted. The durable polymer residue has […]
September 27th, 2010
Xience V Holds Its Own With Sirolimus-Eluting Stents
Larry Husten, PHD
In the trials presented on Thursday at TCT, the everolimus-eluting Xience V stent (EES) proved superior to the paclitaxel-eluting Taxus stent at 2 years. But, as Gregg Stone discussed here recently, a more formidable comparator for EES are the sirolimus-eluting stents (SES). Two trials presented on Friday demonstrated that EES are comparable in efficacy to SES. […]