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The market for cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitors has
the potential to expand rapidly, if drugs like Monsanto
Searle's blockbuster anti-arthritic COX-2 inhibitor Celebrex
(celecoxib) have their approvals expanded to include pain
and cancer.
"An indication for pain would expand the market for COX-2s
from the current value of $6 billion to $16 billion, and
should they be approved for cancer indications as well,
this could expand the market to $25 billion," Richard De
Schutter, Vice Chairman of Monsanto, told IMS Health's Pharmaceutical
Company Profiles the week before its official merger
with Pharmacia & Upjohn; Mr De Schutter is Chief Administrative
Officer elect of the new Pharmacia Corp.
Celebrex, Searle's flagship product (co-marketed with Pfizer),
and the leading non-steroidal antiarthritic in the world
in 1999, has had phenomenal
success since its first launch (in the USA) in February
1999.
To the year end December 1999, according to IMS HEALTH's
MIDAS database,
Celebrex witnessed sales of $1.3 billion, with sales of
Novartis' NSAID Voltaren (diclofenac) tailing behind at
$614 million.
"With the launch of Celebrex, Searle has expanded the
arthritis pain market by 20% - the market is projected to
continue to expand for a long time," Mr De Schutter
told IMS HEALTH.
The other COX-2 inhibitor on the market, Merck & Co's Vioxx
(rofecoxib), was first launched in Mexico in March 1999,
and achieved sales of $383 million in the period to December
31.
The launch of the COX-2s
has resulted in an erosion of the traditional NSAID market
in the US - for the year ending December 1999, out of a
total of over 49 million prescriptions written for arthritic
conditions, almost 29% were written for COX-2 inhibitors,
according to MIDAS.
Compare this to markets such as Italy and Germany where
COX-2 inhibitors have not yet been launched (Vioxx was launched
in Germany in December 1999), and where 100% of prescriptions
for arthritic conditions are for traditional NSAIDs, and
one can begin to gauge the potential size of the market
for the Searle/Pfizer/Merck & Co products.
Indeed, since the launch of Celebrex, IMS HEALTH's Medical
Dynamics data demonstrates a surge in the number of
treatment days for COX-2 inhibitors versus traditional NSAIDs
in the 'other arthrosis' category in the US.
In the second quarter of 1999 the percentage of treatment
days allocated to the COX-2s was approximately 40% compared
to 60% for the NSAIDs - in the fourth quarter, these figures
had reversed (i.e. 60% of prescriptions were for COX-2 drugs).
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30
Mar 2000, Copyright IMS HEALTH
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