June 10 (Reuters) - A woman who claimed in a lawsuit

that GSK's discontinued heartburn drug Zantac caused her

breast cancer dropped her case shortly before it was set to go

to trial in Illinois state court on Monday, the company

announced.

GSK said in a statement that it did not settle with the

woman, Eugenia Kasza. A lawyer for Kasza did not immediately

respond to a request for comment.

Kasza's case would have been the second over Zantac to go to

trial, after the first ended last month with a victory for GSK

and Boehringer Ingelheim, which also sold Zantac. Another case

was dismissed by a judge shortly before a trial was set to begin

on May 23.

More than 72,000 lawsuits remain pending over Zantac against

companies that sold the drug, which also include Pfizer ( PFE )

and Sanofi. Sanofi has settled about 4,000 cases, and

the Financial Times reported last month that Pfizer ( PFE ) had settled

more than 10,000 cases.

A Delaware judge earlier this month ruled that the cases

could go forward, rejecting a bid by GSK and other drugmakers to

stop plaintiffs from offering expert testimony that the drug can

cause cancer. The drugmakers have said they will appeal.

First approved in 1983, Zantac became the world's best

selling medicine in 1988 and one of the first to top $1 billion

in annual sales. It was originally marketed by a forerunner of

GSK and later sold successively to other companies.

In 2019, some manufacturers and pharmacies halted Zantac

sales after a chemical called NDMA, which is known to cause

cancer, was detected in some pills. Some tests showed that

Zantac's active ingredient, ranitidine, could degrade into NDMA

over time or when exposed to heat.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked manufacturers to

pull the drug off the market in 2020. In the face of mounting

lawsuits, the drugmakers have maintained that there is no

evidence Zantac exposed users to harmful levels of NDMA.

The companies notched a significant win in 2022, when

another judge rejected about 50,000 lawsuits making similar

claims that had been consolidated in federal court in Florida.

Some plaintiffs are appealing that ruling.