Prolia® Wins Priority Review -- For Cancer: FDA

As Fosamax^®'s fortunes fade, Prolia^®'s (from Amgen) rise this morning, thus -- from FiercePharma's Tracy Staton:

. . . .[Amgen's] bone drug Prolia^® won priority review at the FDA for a new, potentially lucrative cancer indication. The use: cancer that has spread to bone. The upshot: an approval could boost sales of the new drug to roughly $3 billion by 2015, analysts say.

Prolia won the FDA nod as an osteoporosis treatment June 1. But the drug isn't expected to vault to quick success in that market. After all, it's crowded with alternatives such as Merck's Fosamax, which recently went generic, and Roche's Boniva. . . .

So, in earnest, begins the end of Fosamax. [We await Merck's federal court filing, later today -- in Manhattan -- challenging the Boles II verdict.]