Zetia-Zocor marketing to focus on efficacy
pharmafile | December 8, 2003 | News story | Sales and Marketing |
Merck and Schering-Plough have indicated that efficacy and not safety will be the focus of their up-and-coming cholesterol combination drug.
Merck chief executive Raymond Gilmartin told the Reuters Health summit in New York: "We're going to stress the positive efficacy benefits of lowering cholesterol using this combination, not so much the safety."
Mr Gilmartin's counterpart at Schering-Plough, Fred Hassan added: "I'm not aware of any major safety studies we're doing versus statins."
The unnamed pill combines Merck's statin Zocor – one of the world's biggest selling medicines – and the companies' co-marketed cholesterol absorbing drug Zetia (Ezetrol in Europe) which made its market debut just over a year ago.
The companies submitted the combination for FDA approval in September and analysts say it could be launched into the highly competitive cholesterol lowering market by the second half of 2004.
The combination will challenge Pfizer's rival statin Lipitor, the world's biggest selling drug and protect Merck's revenues from Zocor which is due to lose its US patent in 2005 and where the bulk of its $5.6 billion sales in 2002 came from. Zocor's patent expired in a number of countries outside the US this year, including the UK.
Zetia works in the digestive tract and is not associated with the potentially damaging raised levels of liver enzymes that have affected a small percentage of patients using statins.
It is thought that the drug combination could be a safer alternative for the liver than using high doses of a statin.
"If you can get the cholesterol benefit without dialling up the dose, I think doctors will prefer that," Mr Hassan told the conference.
He further noted that of the current crop of statins, only Lipitor and Crestor would be strong enough to match the Zetia/Zocor combination.
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