Flosequinan is a

quinolone Quinolone may refer to: * 2-Quinolone * 4-Quinolone * Quinolone antibiotic A quinolone antibiotic is a member of a large group of broad-spectrum bacteriocidals that share a bicyclic core structure related to the substance 4-quinolone. They ...

vasodilator Vasodilation is the widening of blood vessels. It results from relaxation of smooth muscle cells within the vessel walls, in particular in the large veins, large arteries, and smaller arterioles. The process is the opposite of vasoconstriction, ...

that was discovered and developed by

Boots UK Boots UK Limited (formerly Boots the Chemists), trading as Boots, is a British health and beauty retailer and pharmacy chain in the United Kingdom and other countries and territories including Ireland, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Thailand an ...

and was sold for about a year under the trade name Manoplax. It had been approved in 1992 in the US and UK to treat people with

heart failure Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome, a group of signs and symptoms caused by an impairment of the heart's blood pumping function. Symptoms typically include shortness of breath, excessive fatigue, a ...

who could not tolerate ACE inhibitors or digitalis. Boots initiated a clinical trial called PROFILE to see if the drug could be useful in a wider population. The study was terminated early in 1993 due to increased mortality in the drug arm of the trial; preliminary results were published in a conference abstract by the PI Milton Packer and others, which promised data and analysis would be forthcoming in a future paper, which was finally published in 2017. Boots withdrew it from the market in July 1993.

References

Withdrawn drugs Vasodilators 4-Quinolones Sulfoxides Fluoroarenes {{cardiovascular-drug-stub