Cholesterol Remains a Sticky Foe

Pfizer halted work on the product late last year when another study revealed that patients taking torcetrapib and Lipitor had a higher death rate than those taking just Lipitor. Pfizer spent more than $800 million in developing torcetrapib.

A spokeswoman said Thursday that Pfizer hasn't decided if it will continue working on two other compounds in the same class of drugs known as CETP inhibitors. Both are in the early stages of clinical testing.

In that regard it isn't alone. Other companies working on CETP inhibitors include Merck(MRK Quote) and Roche. What has to be determined is whether Pfizer's failure highlights a weakness for the whole class or if torcetrapib was a special case.

Authors of the latest torcetrapib study say raising HDL is too important for companies to abandon work on other CETP inhibitors. An editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, where the Pfizer-sponsored research was published, referred to a "glimmer of hope" for future work on CETP inhibitors.

It's uncertain if there's a glimmer of hope for a Lilly drug that seeks to raise good cholesterol through a different approach than torcetrapib. Two clinical-trial results, reported at the cardiology conference, revealed that Lilly's drug didn't do a better job than Abbott's(ABT Quote) veteran TriCor in raising HDL, even though Lilly's drug is 10,000 times stronger.

TriCor reduces blood fats known as triglycerides and raises HDL.