Looks like Dupont is encountering more resistance over their pricing of Sustiva.
"AIDS Activists Disrupt DuPont's New York Offices
Members of ACT-UP, the AIDS activist group, stormed DuPont's New York offices Thursday demanding the company cut the price of Sustiva. The group charged that Sustiva costs nearly $5,000 annually at the retail level, at least $2,000 higher than other AIDS drugs in its class. DuPont said wholesalers acquire the drug for about $4,000, which it considers a mid-range price, and added it has no control over how the drug is then priced for consumers. Company officials, however, held a conference call with members of the group and agreed to meet with directors of state-run AIDS drug assistance programs and activists. "
Reuters (10/29/98)
AIDS activists are not objecting to the price of protease inhibitors. They acknowledge that PI's are "worth" more than nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTI's). They don't feel that Sustiva should be priced any differently from the other NNRTI's. The other NNRTI's are Viramune (nevirapine) from Boehringer Ingelheim (BI)and Rescriptor- (delavirdine) from Pharmacia & Upjohn.
I can't find it now, but there was a small article in one of the AIDS activist publications when Agouron raised the price of Viracept. The publication noted that Viracept was Agouron's only drug on the market for now, and that they have a lot of expenses due to their extensive pipeline in HIV and cancer. And that was that.
I do not if any of the rumors about Dupont and Agouron are true, but personally I would put more credence in the rumors that Dupont has been in discussions with Agouron over marketing Sustiva and how much they will pay Agouron to use its sales force to sell Sustiva. Apparently Dupont is not winning too many friends with their pricing of Sustiva and besides the expense of a sales force, it looks like Dupont could also use the expertise that Agouron has in successfully marketing an HIV drug to the community.
From my post #5506:
<<Pfizer said a big reason for its soaring SG&A outlay was its hiring of 1,100 new salespeople in the quarter to promote newer prescription drugs, particularly a promising pain and arthritis drug which it
plans to co-market for Monsanto Co.
''Pfizer probably spent $100 million to hire these extra 1,100 salespeople in advance of the Celebra launch, but by doing so they're preparing themselves for a very strong 1999. The company is basically on track,'' said Warburg Dillon Read analyst Timothy Chiang.">>
Message 6016849
Steve Fancy gave a link to a post.
Message 5975148
which referred to this: messages.yahoo.com.
At any rate, Dupont still has over $2 billion left over from the IPO of Conoco.
Glaxo may encounter the same opposition if they try to price Abacavir (1592) as high as protease inhibitors (which is the rumor that activists have heard.).
Here's an interesting link.
cnnfn.com
European drug talks fail
October 30, 1998: 6:45 a.m. ET
Hoechst and Rhone-Poulenc abandon merger discussions, report says
<According to the newspaper, both companies are still on the lookout for strategic partners>
At any rate, it's all rumor, and as I've said before, I doubt if Agouron wants to be acquired.
On another topic, Abbots protease inhibitor -ABT378- which is in Phase II clinical trials shows cross resistance to Ritonavir- (338 fold ?) but is only four times less susceptible to Saquinavir. The resistance is thought due to a newly discovered mutation in the p1/p6 and p7/p1 gag gene proteloytic processing sites. Of course Abbot claims all PI's may show the same, but Merck made the same comments about Crixivan's resistance pattern, initially (and even not initially). Merck said all PI's would show the same resistance pattern as Crixivan, which is not true.
aegis.com
"A compensatory mutation in its gag gene lets HIV-1 develop resistance to a new protease inhibitor.
The gag mutations permit the virus to remain viable despite the mutations it must adopt in its protease gene to withstand the powerful new drug, Abbott's ABT-378. Despite these changes, the virus remained sensitive to saquinavir (Roche)."
"Carrillo et al. reported the findings in the Journal of Virology
"In Vitro Selection and Characterization of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Variants with Increased Resistance to ABT-378, a Novel Protease Inhibitor," J Virol, 1998;72(9):7532-41. "
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