A win for antisense: Isis/Genzyme score US OK for Kynamro

A month after a competitor's drug was approved, Genzyme and Isis Pharmaceuticals gained the US FDA's nod to market Kynamro (mipomersen sodium) to treat patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), a rare genetic lipid disorder that causes extremely high elevations of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), causing early onset of arthrosclerosis, with patients often experiencing heart attacks in their early teens, often dying before age 30.