Lilly's $2.5 Bln Prozac Market Is Under Attack From Glaxo, Akzo and AHP
Bloomberg News
October 28, 1998, 5:16 a.m. ET
Drugmakers Aim to Displace Top Antidepressant Prozac: Spotlight
Paris, Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Prozac, the world's best-known
and best-selling antidepressant, has proven a boon for its maker,
Eli Lilly & Co., and helped touch off 15 percent-a-year growth in
the $8.4 billion worldwide market for depression drugs.
Now other drugmakers, including American Home Products Co.,
Glaxo Wellcome Plc and Akzo Nobel NV, are scrambling to grab some
of Prozac's $2.5 billion in sales with their own, similar drugs
they say have fewer side effects than Lilly's pill.
At stake is the well-being of clinically depressed patients,
some of whom have suffered impotence, sleep disorders and other
side effects by using Prozac and other ''selective serotonin re-
uptake inhibitors,'' such as SmithKline-Beecham Plc's Paxil and
Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft.
Also at stake are billions of dollars in sales and millions
in profits; Prozac alone accounted for 30 percent of Indianapolis-
based Lilly's $8.5 billion in sales last year.
The battle between newer drugs and established SSRIs, as
such medicines are commonly known, is most vigorously pressed at
medical meetings like the forthcoming 11th European Congress of
Neuropsychopharmacology, Europe's biggest mental-health meeting,
which starts in Paris Oct. 31. Akzo and American Home are likely
to present studies they hope will persuade psychiatrists their
products are better from the standpoint of patient welfare.
''The problem of the SSRIs is that they cause impotence,''
said Mark Becker, a J.P. Morgan pharmaceuticals analyst. If
Glaxo's Wellbutrin and newer drugs like Akzo's Remeron and
American Home's Efexor can be shown to have fewer side effects
but with similar effectiveness, they could gain market share,
Becker said.
Gap in the Market
Although Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil sales have surged in
recent years, partly due to the fact that it's cheaper to
prescribe drugs than treat depression with psychotherapy, they
aren't a panacea. According to Lehman Brothers, about one-third
of patients don't respond to SSRIs.
That leaves a large market open for new drugs like Remeron,
Efexor, and Edronax, made by Pharmacia & Upjohn, all of which act
on different communication ports in cells called receptors than
SSRIs. The market opportunity has also helped Glaxo Wellcome
breathe new life into Wellbutrin, an older drug that Glaxo is
selling both as an antidepressant and as a smoking-cessation
treatment under the name Zyban.
Yves Lecrubier, a member of the ECNP's scientific committee,
said he will be particularly interested in new data on American
Home's depression drug Efexor for treating general anxiety
disorder, a condition now treated with older drugs like Roche
Holding AG's Valium and Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc.'s Xanax.
''We know it is effective in treating panic and obsessive
compulsive disorder, but there is no evidence so far that it
could be effective in general anxiety disorder,'' said Lecrubier.
''This would represent a serious advance, because it's a very
prevalent disorder.''
Panic, Social Phobia
Seeking to keep one step ahead of the new competitors,
drugmakers like SmithKline Beecham Plc are looking to tap what
they say will be a major related market for SSRIs called social
and panic disorder.
SmithKline's Paxil, now the fastest-growing SSRI with 14
percent of the U.S. market, was recently cleared to treat social
phobia in the U.K. The company estimates that approvals of SSRIs
as treatments for social phobia and panic could double the
potential SSRI market to 60 million patients in developed
countries. SmithKline said it plans to promote Paxil, which is
sold in Europe as Seroxat, to doctors at the ECNP by discussing
the new approval.
The approval for social phobia is likely to boost sales of
Paxil and other SSRIs, particularly when Prozac begins to lose
patent protection starting in 2001 and generic competitors enter
that market. Drugmakers have also targeted Europe as a major
market, where many doctors are still prescribing older
antidepressants.
''We expect Paxil to continue to grow,'' said Jan Leschly,
SmithKline chief executive, in an interview last week. ''The new
indication for social phobia is just rolling out and that will
certainly help us to differentiate the product'' from rival
drugs.
Comparative Study
Akzo, which is seeking to increase its 2 percent share of
the U.S. market for anti-depressant drugs, plans to present new
data from a study comparing Remeron with Paxil, according to
spokeswoman Helmal Van Leeuwue. ''This is an important meeting,''
she said.
Thanks to the SSRIs, the market for depression treatments
now constitutes about 60 percent of the $10 billion U.S. market
for drugs that affect the central nervous system. Other
categories of central nervous system drugs are also growing,
however, including antipsychotics, a class that includes
schizophrenia drugs like Eli Lilly's Zyprexa and Zeneca Group
Plc's Seroquel. They are competing for market share against
market leaders like Risperdal from Johnson & Johnson and Clozaril
from Novartis AG.
While schizophrenia -- a broad category of mental illness
causing delusions, hallucinations and social withdrawal --
affects about one percent of the population in developed
countries, as much as 25 percent of hospital beds are occupied by
schizophrenics, making the development of new drugs a major
priority for public-health providers.
Promising Newcomer
Most promising of a new crop of antipsychotics appears to be
Lilly's Zyprexa, a drug that generated sales of $730 million in
1997 and could balloon to $3.1 billion in 2002, according to
Merrill Lynch forecasts.
While Zeneca has done its best to promote Seroquel, sales so
far have been disappointing compared with Zyprexa, analysts say.
Merrill Lynch forecasts Seroquel sales of $460 million in 2002.
''It's a competitive market, no doubt about it,'' said Chris
Dalton, a Zeneca spokesman. He said Zeneca's message at the Paris
conference will focus on the so-called ''switch market'' for
schizophrenics who don't respond well to other drugs.
While the conference isn't expected to hear many
presentations of late-stage clinical data for antipsychotic
drugs, organizers say a number of early-stage findings will be
presented.
''There are new drugs in many different areas,'' said the
ECNP's Lecrubier. ''We will be looking at different hypotheses as
to why these may be more effective and have better tolerance than
previous drugs.''
--Dane Hamilton in the London newsroom (44-171) 330-7727/ab
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