Novartis and his next cancer Adventure

Source: Swissinfo 2014-07-08 why Novartis is willing to pay GlaxoSmithKline 16 billion US dollars (about RMB 100 billion) in exchange for a series of cancer drugs that were not sold well before? Analysts don't think Swiss pharmaceutical companies are burning money Here's why People usually think that cancer life-saving drugs must sell well In fact, on the contrary, if pharmaceutical companies want to succeed, they must specialize in a certain disease and become dedicated marketers Lapatinib, an anti breast cancer drug marketed in the United States as tykerb, is a case in point It can compete with Roche's Herceptin and its successor, perjeta Although the drug has been on the market for seven years and its efficacy has been confirmed, the anti-cancer drug sold in Europe under the trade name of tyverb has never had full potential and its sales are declining GlaxoSmithKline failed to develop the potential of lapatinib and other anticancer drugs sold to Novartis because the company focused on respiratory disease drugs, which accounted for only 5.4% of its business Michael nawrath, an analyst at z ü RCHER kantonalbank, points out that the company lacks a hot pillar product that can drive new drugs Roche and Novartis, as two of the world's largest anti-cancer drug companies, both focus on the research and development of such high-profit products, and also have special sales teams of tumor drugs This is unlikely to happen if GlaxoSmithKline's drugs are handed over to the two companies Over the past few years, Novartis has built infrastructure and has taken second place in cancer drug manufacturing, navratt explained This will enable it to apply the existing sales channels and carry out necessary promotion research to develop the potential of the series of drugs Details of the transaction: on April 22, Novartis announced a $28.5 billion deal to refocus its business - the sale of the "problem children" vaccine and animal health business to GlaxoSmithKline, as well as the acquisition of GlaxoSmithKline's high margin anti-cancer product line and options in its current and future cancer research and development channels Although Novartis sold its vaccine division to GlaxoSmithKline for $7.1 billion and its animal health business to Eli Lilly for $5.4 billion, which would bring a lot of revenue to the company, analysts criticized Novartis for the $16 billion it might pay for cancer drugs This range of drugs includes pazopanil, tafinlar and mekinist, lapatinib, Arzerra, promacta, and options for products under development Novartis is expected to strengthen its position in the $35 billion market for immuno oncology drugs thanks to GlaxoSmithKline's range of drugs, according to naflat Immunotherapy is an innovative research method that any pharmaceutical company must actively invest in, because the potential of mixed therapy is to double the sales revenue of drugs Immunotumor therapy is to use the body's own immune system, combined with substances directly targeting tumor cells, to more effectively fight against tumor cells These drugs can turn incurable diseases into controllable chronic diseases such as AIDS, diabetes or high blood pressure Promotion hope "according to our guess, if the same series of drugs are in the hands of professional development and marketers of cancer drugs, they will generate about $2.9 billion in sales revenue in 2013," said naflat Last year GlaxoSmithKline made only $1.6 billion in sales The bank analyst also revealed that the series of drugs may even reach a peak sales of 12 billion US dollars In cancer medicine, no one thought Novartis could be equal to Roche pharmaceutical, which also comes from Basel Novartis' leukemia drug, Glivec, made $4.7 billion in sales in 2013, and was seen as a single winner, ranking fourth in the list of anti-cancer drug sales, while the top three were Roche products Today's deal with GlaxoSmithKline raises hopes Joseph Jimenez, chief executive, told the Swiss tabloid Blick frankly that he was now ready to overtake Roche Products with a patent term of 2023-2030 should be enough for Novartis to further develop and more easily cope with the so-called "patent cliff" caused by the lack of protection of hot-selling drugs Novartis has seen $1 billion in sales potential from at least three products, including the anti renal cancer drugs votrient and the anti melanoma drugs tafinlar and mekinist, which will make Novartis the largest manufacturer of skin cancer drugs, said Novartis spokesman Sam Benzhe According to IMS Health, a healthcare industry intelligence provider, the patent cliff predicts that by the end of patent protection in 2016, it will cause a loss of $106 billion in sales revenue of brand drugs compared with the previous five years Valsartan, a high blood pressure drug, has been a popular product of Novartis for more than ten years By the time the drug began to lose patent protection in 2011, counterfeit drugs with less than a fraction of the cost of the original product flooded the market The patent protection right of imatinib, a leukemic drug held by Novartis, has expired in many countries, and the same fate will be repeated As Novartis has warned, the real impact of imatini's patent expiration will occur in 2015 and 2016, when the patent expires in the United States and Europe But revenue from its successor, Tasigna, will offset some of the decline in sales The secret of selling? Novartis can use the sales channel of the anticancer drug afinitor for the products such as lapatinib and pazopanil purchased this time, because the three uses are similar Anti melanoma can also be used in the same channel Analysts believe that with Novartis' expertise in this area, combined with the existing professional sales force, this will not cause too much cost growth The key to drug marketing is doctors By analyzing the business potential of patients and prescriptions, pharmaceutical companies can identify which doctors are most likely to prescribe drugs for them The traditional practice is to send sales representatives to visit these doctors regularly (usually for several weeks) to provide them with clinical materials, journal articles and free samples of drugs Burson Marsteller estimates that in the United States alone, by the end of the first decade of this century, Novartis had employed about 6000 full-time sales representatives to sell a high-end drug, such as the high blood pressure drug valsartan, with a marketing budget of 100 million Swiss francs (about 700 million yuan) The changing times, however, are changing As doctors no longer rely on information provided by sales representatives, but directly search online, the number of Representatives is also shrinking, Boya said Now, instead of using gifts and samples to impress doctors, these sales reps are using tablets full of clinical data to convince doctors All enterprises are carrying out expensive clinical trials, comparing products for the treatment of the same disease one-to-one, in order to obtain evidence that a drug has better efficacy or higher cost performance Novartis is ready to do the same Last year, the company spent $9.6 billion on research and development GlaxoSmithKline's newly approved drugs, tafinlar and mekinist, are direct competitors of the Roche anti skin cancer drug, zelboraf Novartis may also conduct clinical trials to show that tafinlar and mekinist, the first drugs approved for combination therapy, outperformed verofinib in drug resistance In today's era, companies are feeling indignation, asking them to disclose the list of payments and gifts, and there is still a lot of pressure to recover the cost of these expensive marketing efforts ZS associates, a marketing service provider, said the number of U.S pharmaceutical representatives dropped from 107000 at its peak in 2006 to 60000 in 2013, which is one reason Zhisheng's analysts said that on the one hand, there are more rules and regulations for contacting doctors; on the other hand, the compound anti-cancer drugs need specially trained representatives to persuade tumor experts, especially when the quality of various products is similar "In the 1990s, sales reps used freebies for product promotion," naflatt added "Now you need more than the sales force You need to provide evidence of effectiveness It's not just about efficacy, it's about economics You have to defend the price of 50000 Swiss francs a year (for each treatment)." For competitive reasons, Novartis would not disclose the number of sales representatives and business distribution details But in 2013, Peter Deane, head of global sales force effectiveness, told eyeforpharma, the pharmaceutical website that Novartis had about 18000 sales representatives and sales managers Source address: http://origin.swissinfo.ch/chi/% E8% AF% Ba% E5% 8D% 8e% E5% 8A% E5% 85% B6% E4% B8% 8b% E4% B8% 80% E4% B8% AA% E7% 99% 8C% E7% 97% 87% E5% 86% 92% E9% 99% A9 / 38706174