From The $800 Million Pill - Me Too

In This ArticleChapter 8: Me Too!Section 1Section 2Section 3Section 4Section 5Section 6Section 7Section 8Section 9Section 10Section 11ReferencesRelated Links

Section 8

The Prilosec-to-Nexium transition exemplified a common industry practice. Throughout the 1990s, the drug industry poured billions of research dollars into developing alternatives to drugs that were approaching the end of their patent terms. In most cases, the alternatives were little changed from the originals. The better the original sold, the more likely it was that the company would devote considerable research resources to generating a copycat version with renewed patent life.

Another example that garnered considerable public attention was Schering-Plough's Claritin, one of the antiallergy medicines developed in the early 1980s as a nonsedating alternative to an earlier generation of antihistamines. By the late 1990s, the drug was generating over $2 billion a year in sales for Schering-Plough, a figure that was growing rapidly because of the 1997 legalization of direct-to-consumer advertising. To reach the estimated thirty-five million allergy sufferers in the United States, Schering-Plough poured hundreds of millions of dollars a year into ads for the drug. Consumers were encouraged to ask their doctors for a pricey prescription–it cost eighty dollars for a month's supply–that, according to the original studies submitted to the FDA, worked only marginally better than a placebo.

Though you would never know it from the television advertisements featuring handsome women frolicking through flowering fields oblivious to the pollen-laden air, the FDA's reviewer was openly skeptical about the drug's efficacy at the low dose offered by Schering-Plough. The company, which tested the drug on thousands of patients, needed a low dose to ensure that it would be nonsedating, which was the only way the new drug would be able to gain a toehold in the already crowded antihistamine market. But at the low, nonsedating dose, clinical trials showed that only 43 to 46 percent of Claritin users gained relief of allergy symptoms compared to a third of patients on a sugar pill. A separate study that asked doctors to assess the patients on the placebo found that 37 to 47 percent of them had a "good to excellent response to treatment," which as a practical matter was no different than those who took the real pill.[19] In addition to questioning its marginal medical significance, other reviewers at that late 1980s FDA hearing worried that Claritin, whose generic name is loratadine, might be a carcinogen. It took the company several more years of studies before it could dispel those fears. Finally, in 1993, the drug was approved. The delays actually proved to be an auspicious event for Schering-Plough. In the early 1990s, patients on Seldane and Hismanal, the first nonsedating antihistamines to hit the market, began turning up in hospital emergency rooms because of the drugs' violent interactions with other drugs and the development of life-threatening heart irregularities. By the time Claritin hit pharmacists' shelves, there was pent-up demand for a safe alternative, and the new drug immediately jumped to number one in sales in its class.

Yet in the late 1990s, as Claritin neared the end of its patent term, Schering-Plough launched a massive lobbying campaign in Washington to get an extension on its patent. The company claimed the long delays at the FDA had robbed it of years of market exclusivity. Aware of the history, Congress rebuffed Schering-Plough's frequent requests.

Forced to fall back on research and development, Schering-Plough scientists took apart loratadine to see what made it tick. They discovered the active part of the drug was actually a metabolite of the whole molecule, which became active in the stomach after patients began digesting the pill. They patented this metabolite, called it desloratadine, and filed a new drug application with the FDA. It was approved in late 2001, just months before the expiration of loratadine's patent. The company launched a massive advertising campaign that convinced millions of their customers to switch to the new, equally expensive but no more effective drug. Then, to frustrate the generic companies getting ready to sell loratadine, Schering-Plough announced it would begin selling Claritin as an over-the-counter allergy remedy.[20] Public-sector science has sometimes pushed industry researchers down the road to better medicine, only to discover as they neared the end of their labors that they developed yet another me-too drug. During the late 1990s, few drug classes received more media attention than a new pain reliever known within the medical community as Cox-2 inhibitors. The original members of this new drug class were Celebrex, made by G.D. Searle (later bought by Pharmacia), and Vioxx, made by Merck. In 2001, Pharmacia came out with a follow-up drug to Celebrex called Bextra.Previous PageSection 9 of 12Next Page: Section 9
Medscape General Medicine.  2004;6(2):57.  ©2004 Medscape


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