Prescriptions For Monsanto's Arthritis-Pain Drug Continue To Climb
02/25/99
Dow Jones Business News
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Monsanto Co.'s arthritis-pain drug Celebrex continues to chalk up new prescriptions at a brisk pace.
Celebrex racked up 164,459 prescriptions in its third week on the market, which ended Feb. 19, up from the 93,838 written its second week, according to data from IMS Health (RX), a pharmaceutical auditor.
Earlier this week, a leading health-care analyst told Dow Jones that, based on the latest sales numbers, it is "conservative" to predict that Celebrex will hit $1 billion in sales in its first year on the market.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Celebrex Dec. 31 as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis.
Since Viagra is the No. 1-selling recent drug in achieving early sales, this means that Celebrex could easily become the all-time early top-seller among recent drugs, said analyst Hemant K. Shah.
St. Louis-based Monsanto (MTC) co-markets Celebrex with New York-based Pfizer, and the two are expected to share profits from the drug. The companies haven't disclosed how profits are to be divided. However, some analysts estimate that Monsanto will keep 55% to 60% of the profit. These rough estimates are based on Wall Street's analysis of the experience with cholesterol medication Lipitor, which is also co-marketed with Pfizer.
Celebrex is the first of a new class of arthritis drugs known as Cox-2 inhibitors. They act against an enzyme, part of the pain process, that is called cyclooxygenase-2, or Cox-2 for short. The Cox-2 drugs have special promise, in the view of many doctors, because clinical data suggest that these medications may not cause damage to patients' gastrointestinal tracts, as current drugs do. The current pain drugs, called NSAIDs for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, lead to bleeding ulcers in a small minority of patients. Bleeding ulcers sometimes are fatal, and doctors have been looking for a gentler medication for chronic treatment of pain.
Although Celebrex is the lone Cox-2 inhibitor on the market now, Merck & Co. (MRK) isn't far behind it with its drug Vioxx.
Merck will take its Cox-2 drug before an FDA panel April 20. The panel will make a recommendation to the FDA about whether the drug should be approved for sale in the U.S.
|
