Monsanto Celebrex Prescriptions Reach About 224,000 a Week
Bloomberg News
March 2, 1999, 6:14 p.m. ET
Monsanto Celebrex Prescriptions Reach About 224,000 a Week
St. Louis, March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Monsanto Co.'s new
arthritis drug Celebrex captured about 224,000 prescriptions in
the week ended Sunday as Monsanto and its partner, Pfizer Inc.,
began a marketing campaign for the new painkiller.
That's a 45-percent increase from the approximately 155,000
prescriptions filled in the previous week, according to NDC
Health Information Services, a unit of Atlanta-based NDC Corp.
NDC Health said it estimates the sales by polling several
thousand U.S. pharmacies and then projecting what the national
sales are.
Celebrex is the first of a new class of painkillers that
appear to work without irritating the stomach as do older drugs
such as aspirin and ibuprofen. Since the drug was introduced in
mid-January, more than 600,000 prescriptions have been filled.
Many doctors had watched the progress of Celebrex in recent
years because they had some patients who could not tolerate
existing painkillers. Some of these doctors were quick to
prescribe the new drug for these patients.
Merck & Co. intends to introduce its similar drug, Vioxx,
later this year. J&J has licensed a similar drug from Japan
Tobacco Inc. and could introduce the new painkiller by late 2002.
These new drugs, part of the so-called Cox-2 class, appear
less likely to cause ulcers and stomach bleeding because they
target an enzyme linked to pain and inflammation without blocking
a related enzyme that protects the stomach from its own acid.
Older drug appears to hit both enzymes.
Celebrex is the first drug to come from the research of
Monsanto's drugmaking unit, Searle, since Monsanto acquired the
drugmaker in 1985 for about $2.7 billion.
--Kerry Dooley in the Princeton newsroom (609) 279-4016 /mfr
news.com
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