Doc Bans Drug Rep of Psoriasis Medicine

In May 2006, David Peng, a dermatology professor at the University of Southern California, was disturbed by claims made by an Amgen district manager, who was trying to boost Enbrel at the expense of an older psoriasis med, methotrexate. And so Peng banned Amgen reps from doing ‘lunch-in-learns’ with residents at his clinic at USC’s Keck School of Medicine, and decided to use a med by Genentech for an investigator-initiated study.We know this after reading an e-mail from an Amgen rep, Matt Mitchell, who was at the May 2006 sales call. He wrote this follow-up note to his manager: “During our call, he (Peng) expressed to me that the call you and I made on him in May really upset him. He took issue with some of the information you expressed to him about MTX: its safety and relative cost. He felt that the data was not properly represented. He stated that he has always had a lot of respect for Amgen and thinks that Enbrel is the best biologic. However, he thought that some of the claims you were making were not what he had come to expect from Amgen.”… Read Entire Story….