Monsanto's Celebrex Soars To 55,000 Prescriptions In 2nd Wk
By Thomas M. Burton
CHICAGO (Dow Jones)--Sales of the new Monsanto Co. (MTC) arthritis-pain drug Celebrex continued to soar in its second week on the market, according to prescription-tracking information.
The drug, made by Monsanto's Searle pharmaceutical division and co-marketed by Pfizer Inc. (PFE), generated 55,000 prescriptions for the two weeks ending Sunday, Jan. 31.
That number far exceeded the slightly fewer than 12,000 prescriptions recorded by Warner-Lambert Co.'s (WLA) cholesterol-lowering Lipitor in its first two weeks of marketing in 1997. Lipitor now is a multibillion-dollar drug, and until Celebrex was No. 2 in generating the highest early sales results.
Pfizer's Viagra for impotence still holds the sales record for the first two weeks of marketing, but Viagra sales slowed after several months amid safety concerns.
"Celebrex is really becoming a phenomenon," said drug-industry analyst Hemant K. Shah. The prescription sales data were provided to Dow Jones by NDC Health Information Services, a leading provider of health-care information that is able to track prescription sales on a daily basis.
Shah said Celebrex had seized 6% of the arthritis-pain prescription drug market by late last week, an unusually dramatic inroad after just two weeks on the market. That success is especially impressive given that several of the leading pain-killers are inexpensive generics, like ibuprofen and naproxen.
Celebrex is an especially important drug for Monsanto, which has borrowed heavily to finance its ventures into agriculture-biotechnology and thus needs the income stream from a blockbuster drug. The package-label wording granted to Monsanto by the Food and Drug Administration had been viewed as limiting sales of the drug. But now, Shah and other analysts are saying that Celebrex could very well exceed $1 billion in sales during its first year on the market, which would be an unusual success.
Celebrex sales during the week ended Jan. 24 were approximately 10,000 prescriptions.
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