Sanofi's Acomplia tests EU appetite for new drugs
Thu Jun 29, 2006 10:28am ET
PRAGUE (Reuters) - Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA: Quote, Profile, Research) has high hopes for obesity drug Acomplia, launched in Britain this week, but its rollout across the EU is hard to predict given the politics of access to new drugs in Europe.
Jean-Francois Dehecq, chairman and CEO of the French group, told Reuters on Thursday the European Medicines Agency had done a "fantastic" job in reviewing and approving the medicine more rapidly than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
But Sanofi now faces a country-by-country fight to get Acomplia accepted and reimbursed within individual national health services.
Even in Britain, widespread prescription use is unlikely until the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommends it as a cost-effective treatment.
Sanofi also hopes to launch Acomplia before the end of this year in Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Finland and Norway.
It has yet to give a date for launch in France, however, where the world's third biggest drugmaker first needs to agree a price with the government.
"We have to go country by country and that story is really a political one," Dehecq said on the fringes of the annual meeting of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations.
Slow access to new medicines has dominated the agenda at the meeting, with many company executives complaining that political barriers are blocking innovative new medicines as governments favor cheaper old ones in a bid to save costs. Continued...
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