Medtronic Inc. and Guidant Corp. need to play catch-up in the drug-eluting stent (DES) race. With the Cypher from Cordis Corp. , a Johnson & Johnson operating company, already on the market, and the Taxus from Boston Scientific Corp. expected to be approved shortly, Medtronic and Guidant are now competing for third. One important aspect of their respective competitive strategies: doing trials in the US vs. doing them internationally.
Medtronic decided to rely heavily on a European trial because it believes this will be the fastest—and not an unprecedented--method...