According to the Zhicheng Financial APP, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.US) and other pharmaceutical companies have appealed against the decision of Delaware to allow the Zantac cancer lawsuit to continue. It is understood that the ruling allows more than 70,000 lawsuits claiming that the heartburn drug Zantac may cause cancer to continue. This decision caused GlaxoSmithKline's stock price to plummet.
If Judge Vivian Medinilla of the Delaware Superior Court approves the appeal filed by companies including Pfizer (PFE.US), Sanofi (SNY.US), and Boehringer Ingelheim, the appeal will be directly submitted to the Delaware Supreme Court. GlaxoSmithKline stated that if the judge rejects the appeal, these companies will directly request the Supreme Court to review the case.
These companies all sold Zantac at different times. They believe that Medinilla should approve their motion to prevent the plaintiffs from providing expert testimony on Zantac's cancer-causing properties. This would effectively end all litigation in Delaware, although the vast majority of Zantac litigation across the United States is still pending.
GlaxoSmithKline also announced on Monday that a woman who claimed to have breast cancer from taking Zantac abandoned the lawsuit shortly before the trial.
GlaxoSmithKline stated in a statement that it did not reach a settlement with the woman named Eugenia Kasza.
The Kasza case was supposed to be the second Zantac case to enter the trial stage, and the first case ended in a victory for GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim last month. Another case was dismissed by a judge shortly before the trial on May 23.
It is reported that Sanofi has settled about 4,000 Zantac cases, and Pfizer has settled more than 10,000 cases.
Zantac was first approved in 1983 and became one of the best-selling drugs in the world in 1988. It was also one of the first drugs to generate annual sales of more than $1 billion. It was initially sold by GlaxoSmithKline's predecessor company and later sold to other companies.
In 2019, after carcinogenic substances were detected in some tablets, some manufacturers and pharmacies stopped selling Zantac. Some tests showed that the active ingredient in Zantac, ranitidine, degrades into NDMA over time or when heated.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has required pharmaceutical companies to withdraw the drug from the market in 2020. Faced with increasing litigation, pharmaceutical companies insist that there is no evidence that Zantac exposes users to harmful levels of NDMA.
These companies achieved a major victory in 2022 when another judge dismissed about 50,000 similar lawsuits. Some plaintiffs are appealing this ruling.