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Aug.03

2:44 PM ET

Friday, 3 Aug 2007

Trexima Study Update: No Hamsters Harmed

Posted By:Mike Huckman

Topics:Medicine | Pharmaceuticals

Sectors:Health Care Equipment and Services | Health Care | Pharmaceuticals

Companies:PETsMART, Inc. | Pozen Inc | GlaxoSmithKline plc | Pfizer Inc

Chinese Hamsters
Chinese Hamsters
I have a clarification to make regarding my previous blog entry about the Chinese Hamster problem facing GlaxoSmithKline [GSK Loading... () ] and Pozen [POZN Loading... () ] . Thanks to blog-reader Brian Orelli with www.babybiotechs.com who caught the error and pointed it out in an email:

"Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells are grown in tissue culture and the mega dose of the drug was given to the CHO cells growing in media in a tissue culture dish/flask in an incubator.

"No animals were harmed during the experiment. Although a hamster years ago did sacrifice its life to donate the cells now grown in culture in labs all over the world."

A Pozen spokesperson confirms that no Chinese Hamsters were injected with Trexima or killed in the study. They used the reproduced ovarian cells in Petri dishes.

Russian Dwarf Hamster

I tried to get video of real, live Chinese Hamsters to air on CNBC instead of just the still photos we Googled and had a hard-working intern this morning call at least a dozen pet shops in the northern New Jersey and New York City area.

All of them only carried Russian Dwarf hamsters (who knew there were different types?) except for one New Jersey PetSmart [PETM Loading... () ] which had just one left in stock. The manager said it'd be cool if we sent a cameraman to shoot (take pictures) of the little guy, but that we'd have to clear it with corporate first. Well, guess what? You won't be seeing any video of Chinese Hamsters on CNBC.