© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Zantac heartburn pills are seen in this illustration taken October 1, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/Illustration
by Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – The first scheduled trial into claims that GSK Plc’s heartburn drug Zantac caused cancer, which was scheduled to start on Monday, has been postponed, likely by several months.
The case, brought by California resident James Goetz in Alameda County Superior Court, is expected to go to trial in June or July, though no date has yet been set, spokesmen for GSK and attorneys for Goetz.
Goetz alleges that he developed bladder cancer from taking Zantac, and his case will offer an early test of how Zantac cancer claims can go in state courts.
In December, a federal judge threw out all of the Zantac cases in federal court, some 50,000, after finding that the opinions of the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses linking Zantac to cancer were not supported by solid science.
Tens of thousands of cases still remain in state courts, many consolidated before Judge Evelio Grillo in Alameda. Grillo is currently considering what expert testimony to allow in Goetz’s trial.
Zantac, first approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1983, became the world’s best-selling drug in 1988 and one of the first drugs to exceed $1 billion in annual sales.
Originally marketed by a precursor to GSK, it was later successively sold to Pfizer Inc (NYSE:), Boehringer Ingelheim and finally Sanofi (NASDAQ:) SA The four drugmakers are facing lawsuits over Zantac and have denied that the pill causes cancer.
In 2019, some manufacturers and pharmacies halted sales of the drug over concerns that its active ingredient, ranitidine, would break down over time to form a chemical called NDMA. Although NDMA is found at low levels in food and water, it is known to cause cancer in higher amounts.
In 2020, the FDA withdrew all remaining generic and brand-name versions of Zantac from the market, sparking a wave of lawsuits.
