Crunch Time - Page 2

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Sep 4, 2001

But are the major drug companies up to the task? To hear Dr Tollefson talk, one would think that the drug industry en masse is ready to file for Chapter 11, never mind that pharmaceuticals enjoy the highest profits of any industry group and their stocks are high performance blue chips. "I think US-based pharmaceutical companies are in jeopardy," he told his NDMDA Conference audience. "It will be a tortuous route the next 10 years."

Is Dr Tollefson revealing more than he should? Just a few weeks ago, Eli Lilly lost its exclusivity on its Prozac patent, with the first generic competitor now in the pharmacies. It is normal for a company to lose 80 percent of its sales to generic competition in one year, and Eli Lilly's attempt to hold on to some of its market has a certain air of desperation to it: First, a new weekly version of the drug; second, a remarketing of the drug to women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder under the brand name Serafem; and third, the possibility of a Prozac-Zyprexa combination.

Forget the Prozac, one wants to scream. Prozac represents the past. Show us your CRF antagonist, your substance P drug. Give us something that works like gangbusters with none of the side effects and we'll have your shareholders off your backs for the next twenty years.

But in the past two years, half of the top 25 drug companies have merged. The Prozac era drugs and the mega-profits they generated are drying up, with the new medications years away from coming on stream. Will we live to see the realization of a bright new promise? Only if the drug companies figure a way out of the current fix they have gotten themselves into.

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