J&J to increase Cypher production

Johnson & Johnson announced that it will ramp up production at the Puerto Rico facility where its drug-coated stent is manufactured after a series of studies appear to give it the edge against its competitors. J&J executives say the company can only meet about half the demand for the increasingly popular stent. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association comparing the Cypher with the Taxus, which is manufactured by rival Boston Scientific, found that patients with the Taxus required follow-up surgery about twice as often as those with the Cypher. Two additional studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this week offer similar evidence.

- see this story from the Boston Globe