Cardiologist Steve Nissen described DEFINE as a medium-sized safety trial intended to find out "whether anacetrapib would show the same increase in adverse cardiovascular events that was seen with torcetrapib."
As of December, 2012, these drugs have generally failed in trials, either causing a marked increase in deaths (Torcetrapib), or having no meaningful clinical improvement despite HDL increases (Dalcetrapib).
A compound related to torcetrapib, Dalcetrapib (investigative name JTT-705/R1658), was also being studied, but trials have since been ceased.