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Better than Viagra?
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May 29, 1998: 12:16 p.m. ET
ICOS Corp.'s stock jumps on buzz its impotence pill has fewer side effects
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - A news report touting an anti-impotence pill developed by biotech firm ICOS Corp. as "potentially a better product" than Viagra sent the company's stock skyrocketing 25 percent Friday.
By 11 a.m., shares of the Bothell, Wash.-based ICOS had soared 4 points to 20-1/4 on the Nasdaq. Earlier in the session, the stock surged 45.4 percent on heavy volume of 4.3 million shares, far above the average daily volume of 200,000.
The buying spree came after BusinessWeek magazine reported that ICOS Corp.'s impotence medication, IC351, has fewer side effects than Viagra and is more effective than the Pfizer Corp. pill in enzyme-blocking.
Writing in the "Inside Wall Street" column of the June 8 issue of BusinessWeek, Jim McCamant, the magazine's Medical Technology Stock Newsletter editor, also said IC351 ultimately may be used to treat congestive heart failure and angina.
The frenzied interest in the ICOS pill, for which clinical trials on humans are still at an early stage, underscores the growing craze for miracle medications that has suddenly thrust biotechnology firms into the market spotlight.
More than a million men have received prescriptions for Viagra since the drug's approval on March 27. At one point, doctors were writing nearly 50,000 prescriptions a day.
This week, however, Viagra's maker, Pfizer Corp., sought to allay concerns about the deaths of six men who took the pill. Pfizer said the deaths resulted from known heightened risks of cardiac stress related to sex and from taking the pill while using nitrate medications.
ICOS develops drugs to treat chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma, artherosclerosis and multiple sclerosis, and conditions ranging from hypertension to diabetes. 
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ICOS Corp.
Pfizer Inc.
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