Biogen's soluble CD4

Late clinicals for the AIDS drug have "been a struggle," Biogen Chairman and CEO James Vincent told a Jan. 8 Hambrecht & Quist life sciences conference in San Francisco. "Introduction of the parallel track program by the FDA has made it exceedingly difficult to recruit patients for the normal blinded clinical trials necessary to do sound clinical research," Vincent said. Biogen has also found that CD4's binding affinity has been lower in patients than it was in the laboratory. As a result, Biogen has "reduced the size of the clinical research program," Vincent said.