GSK to showcase '$2.8bn' cancer drug
By Sylvia Pfeifer (Filed: 27/11/2005)
GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's largest pharmaceuticals group, this week plans to unveil details of a breakthrough cancer drug that could be a potential blockbuster generating billions of pounds of sales for the company.
The group will use a research seminar to present data on a potential treatment for low blood platelet count, which is associated with liver failure and chemotherapy. At the moment, patients suffering from the disease either have to undergo a blood transfusion or have their spleen removed. If GSK's product is successful, those treatments could be replaced by a tablet.
The drug, called eltrombopag, is still in the early stages of development but analysts at Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, estimate that it could become a $2.8bn-a-year bestseller. Lehman Brothers estimates the overall size of the market to be $4.5bn.
GSK is believed to have started talks with the Food & Drug Administration, the US medicines regulator, about getting it approved. Analysts say the product could be launched as early as the middle of 2007.
The seminar, the first to focus on cancer, will mark GSK's arrival as a major player in the fast-growing world of cancer medicine. Until now, cancer has been a small area for GSK, accounting for just 5 per cent of group sales.
The company is also expected to give details of other potential cancer drugs, including lapatinib, a medicine initially developed for breast cancer but which could have applications in a wide range of tumour types.
The emergence of the new cancer franchise will be seen as a further sign that the restructuring of GSK's research and development operations is paying off. The company has in recent years set up so-called "centres of excellence" focused on different therapeutic areas which compete for central funds.
At GSK's third-quarter results last month, Jean-Pierre Garnier, the chief executive, noted that the company's research and development productivity has increased, with the number of projects in phase two and phase three trials soaring by 74 per cent in recent years.
Garnier used the results to announce that the company is also developing a vaccine to combat an outbreak of bird flu in humans and increasing its production capabilities so that it will be able to produce the huge quantities needed if there is a pandemic. GSK will start clinical trials of the vaccine at the start of next year and hopes to file for approval with the regulators by the end of 2006.
Garnier also used the opportunity to say that GSK was also willing to give free licensing agreements for Relenza, an anti-viral medicine, to alleviate a shortage of flu medicines over the coming winter.
In October GSK posted its best quarterly results for three years. Sales for the third quarter jumped by 9 per cent to £5.4bn, buoyed by strong sales of Advair, the asthma drug, and Avandia, a treatment for diabetes.
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