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Biotech / Medical : Monsanto Co. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (1161)	2/12/1999 5:06:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 2539

02/12 15:00 INTERVIEW-Celebrex prescriptions gain momentum By Susan Nadeau CHICAGO, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Monsanto Co.'s <MTC.N> G.D. Searle and Co. pharmaceutical unit said Friday that it expects its new arthritis pain drug Celebrex to generate more than 100,000 new prescriptions in its fourth week on the market. In an interview, Searle's chief operating officer, Al Heller, said the drug, which has had the second-fastest start of any new drug, is gaining on the leader, Pfizer Inc.'s blockbuster impotency drug Viagra. Searle is co-marketing Celebrex with Pfizer <PFE.N>. "The numbers suggest we'll have a week of over 100,000 new prescriptions," Heller said. "Our expectation is we should continue to see this rise in new prescriptions for an extended period of time." According to a report by pharmaceutical information provider NDC Health Information Services, from Saturday to Tuesday of this week, Celebrex's fourth full week in the market, the drug generated more than 45,500 prescriptions nationwide. For the full week ended Feb. 5, Celebrex's third week on the market, there were more than 80,500 Celebrex prescriptions, and in the first three weeks that number totaled more than 132,000, NDC estimated. Celebrex is the first of a new class of Cox-2 inhibitors to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It was designed to treat pain and arthritis without causing the serious gastrointestinal side effects often seen in drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen. Cox-2 drugs inhibit the Cox-2 enzyme that triggers pain, but not the Cox-1 enzyme that protects the lining of the stomach. Searle has said more than 107,000 Americans are hospitalized each year from stomach ulcers and other complications, and as many as 16,500 people die. Stephen Scala, an analyst with Cowen & Co., said Celebrex prescriptions will likely beat his first-month estimates. "It's off to a very, very good start, which we anticipated," Scala said. Doctors are prescribing the drug even before Searle's main marketing push, Heller said. Next week the company will hold a meeting to brief its sales representatives on the drug. The official marketing campaign will kick off on Feb. 22. A question remaining, however, is whether insurance and managed care companies will agree to pay for Celebrex. At an average cost of $2.42 a day, Celebrex is comparable in price to other brand-name arthritis treatments, but much cheaper generic treatments are available. At this point, Heller said, some smaller organizations and hospitals have agreed to cover Celebrex, and no major organizations have outright denied it. The process of gaining coverage of a drug can take 60 to 120 days, he said, and Searle expects answers from the major players in 30 to 60 days. Heller said Celebrex is expected to save insurers money currently spent on anti-ulcer drugs, as well as doctor and emergency room visits and hospital stays. "There's a real pharmaco-economic story to be told here," he said, adding that outside data has shown "this drug is not only therapeutically advantageous but also economically advantageous." Heller said Searle intends to launch direct-to-consumer advertising of Celebrex, but declined to give details. Shares of Monsanto were off 19 cents, at $47.375. moneynet.com@NEWS-P2&Index=1&HeadlineURL=../News/NewsHeadlines.asp&DISABLE_FORM=&NAVSVC=News\Company

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (1161)	2/12/1999 5:18:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Respond to of 2539

02/12 11:42 FOCUS-Monsanto GM cotton fails to win EU backing (Adds comments from U.S. official paragraphs 14-17) By Adrian Croft BRUSSELS, Feb 12 (Reuters) - Two varieties of genetically modified cotton marketed by U.S. biotechnology firm Monsanto Co <MTC.N> have failed to win enough support from European Union governments to be approved for sale in the bloc, the EU said on Friday. The EU's executive Commission also said that the Netherlands, on behalf of Dutch company Avebe, had retracted a request for a genetically modified potato variety to be approved for sale on the 15-nation EU market. The developments come at a time of intense debate in many EU countries about the safety of genetically modified food. Although the Monsanto cotton varieties did not receive enough backing in a regulatory committee, the European Commission said a final decision on whether to approve them for the EU market must still be taken by environment ministers, possibly in June. Monsanto is seeking approval to commercially grow and sell genetically modified cotton seeds in the EU, particularly in Spain and Greece. Its request was submitted to the EU through Spain in 1996. An EU scientific committee concluded last year that there was no evidence that the cotton lines would be harmful to humans or the environment. Commission spokesman Peter Jorgensen said that Thursday midnight was the deadline for the 15 EU member governments to send in their responses on whether they favoured the release. "Even though not all member states have yet voted...we now know there will not be a qualified majority for either of these two cotton lines from Monsanto," Jorgensen said, referring to the majority needed under the EU's weighted voting system. He said the Commission would put the proposal to approve the cotton varieties to EU environment ministers "because we believe there are no problems with this." Tom McDermott, a spokesman for Monsanto Europe, said the company was disappointed. "There is no scientific evidence that would justify this, in our opinion," he told Reuters. He said one of the cotton varieties concerned, Bollgard, was insect-protected and could reduce use of chemical insecticides by up to 50 percent. The other variety is herbicide-resistent. "These two products are bringing well documented benefits to growers, as well as the environment, around the world," McDermott said, adding that both varieties were used in the United States. The retraction of the Dutch proposal to have Avebe's genetically modified potato released on the EU market came after the EU's Scientific Committee on Plants said last October that not enough study of possible risks had been carried out. Frank Loy, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs who is visiting Brussels for talks with European Commission officials on environmental and other issues, said he could not comment directly on the Monsanto issue. But he stressed the importance of focussing on science in assessing the safety of genetically modified crops. "Trade ought to go ahead unless there is a risk that is reasonably demonstrable that something bad is going to happen," he told reporters. "If we don't focus on the science and try to get agreement on that, we don't have an anchor on which to base our decisions. We're just floating around in trade politics and I don't think that's good," Loy added.

To: Dan Spillane who wrote (1161)	2/12/1999 5:23:00 PM
From: Anthony Wong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2539

Novartis to Introduce New Herbicide-Tolerant Crop Technology Bloomberg News February 12, 1999, 1:31 p.m. ET Novartis to Introduce New Herbicide-Tolerant Crop Technology Minneapolis, Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Novartis AG, the world's biggest crop chemicals company, said it has developed a new weed control system that could dent the dominance of Monsanto Co.'s herbicide-tolerant Roundup Ready technology. The system developed by Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis combines genetic engineering and a new class of chemistry to produce seed that will enable farmers to spray a new Novartis herbicide over their crop, killing weeds without damaging the crop itself. Novartis, which says its new product heralds ''the next generation of herbicide-tolerant crop technology,'' still requires approval to market it from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The company plans to release details of the technology at a press conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico on Feb. 19 during the Commodity Classic, a commodities industry convention. In the two years since it was introduced, St. Louis-based Monsanto Co.'s Roundup Ready soybeans, corn and cotton, have been widely adopted by farmers. Roundup Ready crops are resistant to Monsanto's best-selling Roundup herbicide, which comes off patent in the U.S. in 2000. The only commercially available product that currently competes -- and that only to a small extent -- with Roundup Ready is the Liberty Link system offered by AgrEvo GmbH, a joint agricultural venture of German chemical companies Hoechst AG and Schering AG. Liberty Link crops are genetically engineered to tolerate AgrEvo's Liberty herbicide. --Toni Clarke in the Chicago newsroom (312) 692-3725 /mfr