There are NO, NO and I repeat NO drugs in testing to replace warfarin for people with mechanical heart valves in the next 5 probably 10 years.
There are two drugs that are in phase III (final) testing that are seeking approval to replace warfarin for short term use to prevent clots after hip and knee surgery. That is IT, ALL, THE FULL EXTENT of it.
Please look at my web pages
http://warfarinfo.com/ximelagatran.htm
http://warfarinfo.com/dabigatran.htm
http://warfarinfo.com/rivaroxaban.htm
I just updated the last two this weekend in preparation for a series of seminars that I am going to give.
The first one is informative because it shows the perils of bringing a drug to market. I testified at the FDA hearing on its approval. AszraZeneca had the champagne on ice and it got voted "not approvable" be the margin of 3 yes votes to 152 no votes and 1 abstention.
It was also estimated that AstraZeneca was going to price Exanta at $10 to $15 per pill. At that rate many insurance companies would not have covered it.
Personally, I have supervised the switching of about 1,000 people between Coumadin and generic. Many have switched between different generics. A very few have gone back to Coumadin. We do between 600 and 725 INR tests per month. Every month we have about 58% of the people in range. So if switching (in any order) makes any difference, it does not show up in our numbers. I used to make good money giving talks for DuPont when they owned warfarin. However, they wanted me to say that Coumadin was a better product. There is stll not even one published study that shows anything in favor of warfarin. When they couldn't show me anything other than their marketing department's dreams I refused. It cost me a bundle of money but I had to live with myself. Years later they still could not pay me enough to say that sticking with Coumadin is based on even the tiniest bit of reality.
It doesn't hurt to take Coumadin. If you feel better spending your money on it, fine. But nobody can say that it is based on science.
The name of th institution makes no difference to me. I was an expert witness in a lawsuit against the NYPD where the head of a department at a New York medical school gave a sworn deposition that a police officer taking warfarin couldn't even be on duty at a parade because he could bleed to death from from someone punching him in the stomach. It shows that misinformation can come from big name institutions, too.
The bottom line is that you cannot base a decision on what might come along to replace warfarin. If there is not enough market to be profitable, it will never happen