Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3885
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
Herper M, Kang P.
The World's Ten Best-Selling Drugs
Forbes.com 2006 Mar 22
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/21/pfizer-merck-amgen-cx_mh_pk_0321topdrugs.html?partner=alerts
Notes:
Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:
A number of interesting points arise from this article.
1/. The USA with only 5% of the worlds population, consumes 25 % of the world’s resources and spends 40% of the world total spend on prescription drugs, and yet Americans complain of feeling less well and less happy than the citizens of many other countries.
This apparent anomaly is likely to be due, at least in part, to a rampant consumer culture which includes saturation Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of prescription drugs.
2/. The rate of discovery of genuinely new non-biotech ( small molecules targeting broad basic physiological pathways) seems to be in terminal decline.
3/. Biotech drugs tend be complex proteins and to target very circumscribed processes which often means that they will be able to help a relatively limited proportion of the population.
They will rarely be ‘blockbusters’ like the 10 drugs listed below.
There will therefore be considerable commercial pressure on the manufacturers to try and expand the indications for the use of these drugs to include a higher percentage of the community: to people who don’t need the drug but can be persuaded that they do. (see Point 1/. above)
Thus we come back to Direct-to-Consumer Advertising which is one of the most useful tools for achieving such dubious ambitions.
Full text:
The World’s Ten Best-Selling Drugs
Matthew Herper and Peter Kang 03.22.06, 6:00 AM ET
Forbes.com
www.forbes.com/2006/03/21/pfizer-merck-amgen-cx_mh_pk_0321topdrugs.html?part
ner=alerts
New York – For the first time ever, global spending on prescription drugs has topped
$600 billion, even as growth slowed in Europe and North America.
Worldwide sales of prescription medicines worldwide rose 7% to $602 billion,
according to IMS health, a pharmaceutical information and consulting
company. The United States still accounts for the lion’s share of that, with
$252 billion in annual sales, but sales in it and the other nine biggest
markets grew by only 5.7%. But emerging markets such as China, Russia, South
Korea and Mexico outpaced those markets, growing a whopping 81%.
“While these markets are a small part of the total marketplace, that’s where
the growth is expected to come from,” says Murray Aitken, senior vice
president of corporate strategy at IMS.
Click here for a slide show of the top ten best-selling drugs.
Pfizer’s cholesterol pill Lipitor remains the best-selling drug in the world
for the fifth year in a row. Its annual sales were $12.9 billion, more than
twice as much as its closest competitors: Plavix, the blood thinner from
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis; Nexium, the heartburn pill from
AstraZeneca; and Advair, the asthma inhaler from GlaxoSmithKline.
One thing that’s visibly lacking from the list of international bestsellers
is a biotech drug. In the U.S., three anemia treatments, two from Amgen and
one from Johnson & Johnson, have cracked the top ten. But the biotech
revolution brought by drugs made of protein that must be injected hasn’t had
quite the same impact worldwide, although the category still grew 17% to $53
billion. Most of the drugs on the list are small molecules, the same kind of
chemicals, resembling German dyes, that kick-started the drug business into
existence at the turn of the last century.
But right now, big drug companies are suffering from an innovation drought.
Aitken says only 30 new medicines were launched in key markets in 2005, well
off the peak of the 1990s. A more encouraging sign: There are 2,300
experimental drugs being tested in humans. In the late stages of human
testing, IMS counts 96 cancer drugs, 51 heart treatments, 37 antivirals and
28 potential medicines for arthritis or pain. However, more and more drugs
are being developed by biotech, though Aitken argues that this is less of a
problem than people think.
“Let’s not rewrite history in terms of where the innovations of ten years
ago came from,” Aitken says. Many of them, he notes, came from Japanese
companies, like cholesterol pill Pravachol, or academia, like the cancer
drug Taxol. Both of those became huge sellers for Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Another difficulty for big pharma: There are lots of $1 billion drugs but
few mega-blockbusters. The second-biggest drug generates half as much
revenue as Lipitor, and the tenth top-selling drug, Wyeth’s anti-depressant
Effexor, generates a “mere” $3.8 billion. That means even if new medicines
are successful, they may not fill the holes created as drugs go generic.
That’s one reason why Bristol and Sanofi were under pressure to reach a
settlement in their Plavix patent dispute with generic drugmaker Apotex,
announced late last night.
However, Aitken highlights the potential of several new medicines launched
in the past year, including diabetes treatment Byetta, co-marketed by Eli
Lilly and Amylin Pharmaceuticals, and Lunesta, an insomnia drug made by
Sepracor. And there are more on the way that he says are worth watching. The
two key drug launches this year are of Sutent, Pfizer’s first big entry into
cancer drugs, and Acomplia, the anti-obesity pill being developed by
Sanofi-Aventis.
Sutent is already on the market, although sales data are not yet available.
Acomplia has been delayed at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and
rejected as a stop-smoking drug. Some cardiologists, who are excited about
the drug because of its potential to reduce the risk of heart disease, are
also worried about side effects.
Acomplia works by blocking the same brain receptor that makes pot smokers
hungry; psychiatric symptoms like anxiety are one of the most common reasons
patients stopped taking Acomplia in clinical trials. “It’s a pill that
blocks the ‘happy receptor,’ “ says Prediman K. Shah of Cedars Sinai Medical
Center. “The main reason for concern is that it might have an adverse impact
on depression or suicide.” He is nonetheless very excited about the pill.
The World’s Ten Best-Selling Drugs
1. LIPITOR
Treats: High cholesterol
Pfizer
$12.9 billion
Annual growth: 6.4%
2. PLAVIX
Treats: Heart disease
Bristol-Myers Squibb & Sanofi-Aventis
$5.9 billion
Annual growth: 16%
3. NEXIUM
Treats: Heartburn
AstraZeneca
$5.7 billion
Annual growth: 16.7%
4. SERETIDE/ADVAIR
Treats: Asthma
GlaxoSmithKline
$5.6 billion
Annual growth: 19%
5. ZOCOR
Treats: High cholesterol
Merck
$5.3 billion
Annual growth: -10.7%
6. NORVASC
Treats: High blood pressure
Pfizer
$5.0 billion
Annual growth: 2.5%
7. ZYPREXA
Treats: Schizophrenia
Eli Lilly
$4.7 billion
Annual growth: -6.8%
8. RISPERDAL
Treats: Schizophrenia
Johnson & Johnson
$4.0 billion
Annual growth: 12.6%
9. PREVACID
Treats: Heartburn
Abbott Labs & Takeda Pharmaceutical
$4.0 billion
Annual growth: 0.9%
10. EFFEXOR
Treats: Depression
Wyeth
$3.8 billion
Annual growth: 1.2%
Source: IMS Health, a health care information company. Twelve months ending
December 2005
