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POPSVytorin Stabilizing? It's hard to tell, but it seems as if market share for Vytorin could be leveling out. However, the overall size of the cholesterol market is also something to watch. An important question for Merck and Schering is whether market share really stablizes, goes into a very slow decline, or eventually turns around.
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POPSMerck's Cordaptive Rejected This is a pretty decisive blow against the Merck product -- the FDA issued a "not approvable" letter. The FDA also rejected the brand name Cordaptive.
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POPSNational Lipid Association On ENHANCE The National Lipid Association is a relatively young medical association focusing on how disease can be caused when cholesterol levels go awry. This document is being passed around as a middle-of-the road position than the recommendation on the use of Zetia and Vytorin. It's worth noting, though, that some of the signers -- all of whom work with drug firms and most of whom work with Merck and Schering/Plough -- still mention a pretty restrictive guideline for Zetia use. This guideline notes that some of the signers feel resins like Questran and WelChol should be used before Zetia. That would put Zetia and Vytorin pretty far back in the medicine cabinet. Whether general practitioners will follow this advice is up in the air.
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POPSCigna Takes Step Back On Vytorin This is a first step, reported by the WSJ's Health Blog. It could bode badly for Vytorin's insurance placement, which has been one of the things that has made usage of the drug so widespread.
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POPSOuch. Takeda drops its experimental cholesterol drug.
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POPSBad Days For Pharma Lowest rate of sales growth since 1961. Cholesterol drug market shrinks 15%. New, innovative medicines generate only $441 million, according to IMS Health.
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POPSFDA Panel Backs Suggamadex Not a huge surprise, but still very important to Schering-Plough. It's also nice to see unanimity from the panelists. Suggamadex has been touted by some anesthesiologists as an important advance in their field. The next hurdle for the company is dealing with the continuing controversy over the cholesterol drugs, Zetia and Vytorin, which it sells with Merck.
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POPSGTX Soars A pretty conservative drug development program appears to have paid off for GTX, a small biotech company.
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POPSVytorin Slogan On AHA Web Site The New York Times has a story on the links between the American Heart Association, which issued a statement defending the drug Vytorin, and Merck and Schering-Plough, which makes them. What's not entirely clear from the Times story is that the AHA actually has a page on its site which integrates the "two sources of cholesterol" tagline used to sell Vytorin into an advice page for patients -- on the AHA website. The page offers a link through to a Merck/Schering-sponsored Web site. A clip of the page is below. Click on it to go to the AHA site.
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POPSCrestor Approved To Clear Artery Plaque It will be interesting to see how this impacts sales. Clearing plaque out of the arteries is a nice indication a drug is working, but it doesn't mean for sure that the medicine is preventing heart attacks or saving lives.
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POPSAbbott Posts Good Cholesterol Data The question for this Simcor, which is basically a combo pill of Niaspan and Zocor, is how Merck's results on its niacin combo will compare. Merck's version is aimed at causing less flushing, a side effect that caused 6% of patients on Simcor to discontinue treatment.
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POPSMore Pain In Japan Both Takeda and Eisai were hit hard by negative news about the U.S. prospects for their experimental medicines.
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POPSMore Pain For New Heart Drugs U.S. investors may not have been watching it closely, but TAK-475, a squaline synthase inhibitor, was viewed as one of the only promising new mechanisms in treating bad cholesterol levels left. It had been suggested that Pfizer or another big drugmaker might want to license the drug. This delay is yet another sign of how difficult inventing new blockbusters is getting.
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