Wyeth’s farm team
Executive Summary
Wyeth's "most interesting" developmental project "from a scientific point of view" is the anti-GDF8 antibody MYO-029, in Phase I as a potential treatment for type II diabetes and for wasting diseases, CEO Robert Essner told the J.P. Morgan H&Q conference Jan. 7 in San Francisco. The antibody targets myostatin, which is believed to decrease muscle mass and increase fat and glucose levels in the blood. Essner showed a picture of the Belgian Blue Bull, a species that naturally lacks GDF8; it is "an animal that is massive, is muscled, is low fat, but otherwise lives a very healthy normal lifecycle." If the compound advances in development, it could give Wyeth a new barnyard symbol to supplant the pregnant mares that provide the raw material for the company's flagship conjugated estrogens line...