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Biotech / Medical : VVUS: VIVUS INC. (NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: blankmind who wrote (7401)	4/24/1998 7:35:00 AM
From: Frostman	Respond to of 23519

Motley Fool wrote about VVUS's gain in the PM last night, Yahoo picked it up this morning. Wall Street Journal Interactive covered Viagra Script refills in the following article this morning. It is shaping up to be an interesting day. long VVUS, Frostman XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Launch of Pfizer's Impotence Pill Is Fastest Ever; Patients Seek Refills By ROBERT LANGRETH Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Pfizer Inc.'s impotence pill Viagra continues to enjoy by far the fastest launch ever of any prescription drug, and patients are already starting to come back for refills, according to new data released Thursday. For the week ended Sunday, the New York drug giant sold between 120,000 and 130,000 prescriptions for Viagra, according to NDC Health Information Services, a Phoenix market-research firm, formerly known as Source Informatics. The figure confirms earlier data from NDC that the drug was selling some 15,000 to 20,000 prescriptions a day. These numbers represent an extraordinarily fast start for the drug, which has only been on the market slightly more than two weeks and costs $10 a pill. The previous fastest-starting new drug, Pfizer and Warner-Lambert Co.'s Lipitor, took about four months to reach comparable prescription levels. And some analysts said the true prescription number may be even higher. "These are very conservative numbers," said Hemant Shah, an analyst in Warren, N.J. He projects that the drug is selling some 20,000 to 25,000 prescriptions a day, or as many as 175,000 a week. Further prescription numbers will come on Monday, when NDC's competitor IMS America Ltd. releases its weekly prescription data. Speaking to an overflow crowd at the company's annual meeting Thursday, Pfizer Chief Executive William Steere said the company wouldn't provide specific Viagra sales numbers but agreed that "preliminary response [from doctors and patients] has been extraordinary. There has been a rush to fill prescriptions." But he cautioned that it was too early to make long-range sales projections, because the company doesn't know what the refill rate will be for the drug. He noted that the drug doesn't work on everyone, so some patients might not come back for refills. Nevertheless, preliminary data from NDC show that some 1,000 to 2,000 patients a day were already coming back for refills of Viagra. At the annual meeting, Pfizer executives said the company's new drug pipeline was healthier than ever and will fund a record 170 research projects this year. In particular, the company expects a Food and Drug Administration decision on the marketing application for Pfizer's schizophrenia drug Zeldox by the end of June. The drug is expected to compete aggressively against Eli Lilly & Co.'s popular new medication Zyprexa, and Risperdal from Johnson & Johnson. Moreover, research head John Niblack said Pfizer is developing a promising new inhaled insulin product for diabetics that could replace shots for many patients, as well as a novel drug to reduce brain damage in head-trauma patients. Overall, the company said R&D spending would top $2 billion this year, up from $1.93 billion in 1997. EOM XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX