Merck to Update Outlook for Vioxx at Analysts Meeting Wednesday
Bloomberg News
December 8, 1998, 3:37 p.m. ET
Merck to Update Outlook for Vioxx at Analysts Meeting Wednesday
Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) - Merck &
Co., the world's biggest drugmaker, will give an update on the
outlook for its next potential blockbuster, the experimental
arthritis painkiller Vioxx, at an analysts' meeting tomorrow.
Merck is lagging competitor Monsanto Co. in bringing its
entry in the new class of painkillers to market. Monsanto's drug,
Celebrex, could win FDA approval as within a month.
Merck is expected to discuss tomorrow whether the FDA will
grant a priority review for Vioxx. If it does win accelerated
review, it could be introduced about six months after Monsanto's
Celebrex. If not, it could follow by about a year.
Merck, based in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, rose 1/8 to
157 7/8 in afternoon trading.
At Wednesday's meeting, Merck also will discuss marketing
plans for its drugs, said John Doorley, a company spokesman.
Merck's top-selling product, the cholesterol reducer Zocor
has been losing share to Warner-Lambert Co.'s similar medicine
Lipitor. Merck last month announced a money-back guarantee for
Zocor, allowing refunds for those who take the drug and fail to
reduce their cholesterol as expected.
Lipitor is marketed by Pfizer Inc. through an agreement with
Warner-Lambert. Pfizer, considered one of the drug industry's
best marketers, also will help Monsanto Co. sell Celebrex, its
rival to Merck's Vioxx.
Merck's Best Chance
Both drugs are expected to easily reach annual sales of $1
billion. Merck's Vioxx is seen as Merck's best chance of keeping
profits rising after it loses patents on some of its best-selling
medicines. By 2001, Merck will lose the patent on four drugs that
had more than $5.3 billion in combined 1997 sales. These include
the high blood pressure medicine Vasotec with $2.5 billion in
sales.
Merck suffered a setback last week to its plan to look to
its own pipeline to offset these patent expirations. Monsanto Co.
told an FDA advisory panel that its Celebrex may be a once-a-day
pill, matching an advantage that Merck had claimed for Vioxx.
Vioxx and Celebrex are both so-called Cox-2 drugs. They
appear to work by targeting an enzyme, cyclooxygenase-2, involved
in pain and swelling. Unlike existing painkillers, a Cox-2
inhibitor doesn't suppress a related enzyme, Cox-1, that helps
protect the stomach from its own acid.
As a result, researchers say, the Cox-2 drugs should offer
the same benefits as existing painkillers with fewer side effects
such as bleeding and ulcers for people who take pain medication
for chronic conditions such as arthritis.
The development of the Cox-2 drugs shows how the search for
new medicines has changed in the past decade or so, said Bennett
Shapiro, who leads Merck's basic drug research. Drugmakers once
screened compounds at random to see if they could become
medicines. Now, they look more closely at targets, such as
enzymes, and try to find a way to block them, he said.
Merck 'Mantra'
Merck moved quickly on the Cox-2 project, Shapiro said. The
research was assigned to its Montreal lab where scientists had
developed another promising Merck drug, the once-a-day asthma
pill Singulair. At times, about 60 to 70 scientists, or two-
thirds of the available researchers, worked on the Cox-2 drug.
Recruiting scientists to work on the project was not
difficult, Shapiro said. ''On projects that are going well,
people smell blood in the water,'' he said.
Several likely drug candidates were passed by as Merck
looked for one that would hit Cox-2 and only Cox-2, Shapiro said.
''You never hit Cox-1,'' he said. ''That's really important.''
The drug the company finally came up with meets what Shapiro
termed ''the classic Merck mantra.''
Merck wants its drugs to be highly specific, meaning they
hit their targets in the body fairly precisely. Side effects
often are the result of drugs interfering with compounds in the
body that are similar to their target. The Merck ''mantra'' also
means making drugs that are taken just once a day and in low
doses.
''Vioxx is that kind of drug,'' Shapiro said.
Research has long indicated a possible link between
painkillers and reduced risk of Alzheimer's disease and colon
cancer. Chronic use of older drugs posed enough of a risk that
long-term studies of such disease prevention were not done. With
the Cox-2 drugs, Merck and Monsanto both are doing this kind of
research.
''Now you can move into an area you could never touch
before,'' Shapiro said.
Merck used last year's meeting to unveil early research on a
new depression drug that may work without some of the side
effects of available medicines such as SmithKline Beecham Plc's
Paxil. Antidepressants are some of the world's best-selling
drugs. Eli Lilly & Co.'s Prozac has annual sales of more than $2
billion and Paxil and Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft each top $1 billion.
--Kerry Dooley in Boston through the Washington newsroom (609) |
