Monday, September 26, 2011

Vertex/JNJ Win European Approval For Incivek® (Telaprevir): More Bad News For Merck


This comes as no surprise, but with the 80-20 market split here in the US (in favor of Vertex), this early EU approval lead over the legacy Schering Plough boceprevir will likely skew worldwide splits closer to 90-10 in favor of Incivek®. Ouch.

From Reuters, this morning -- a bit:

. . . .The pill, which won U.S. approval in May, raked in strong sales of $75 million in the first five weeks it was sold in the country. Known as Incivek in the United States, it will be called Incivo in Europe.

J&J has European rights to the product, with Vertex receiving royalties. Vertex holds exclusive rights to the drug in the United States. . . .

And down, again, goes one of Ex-CEO Fred Hassan's "stars".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Feds Probe Marketing Of 3 Merck (Legacy SP) Drugs

http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=6246

Condor said...

Right. To be fair, this has been known since August 8, 2011 -- via Merck's SEC Form 10-Q (at the bottom of page 22), electronically submitted in the SEC's EDGAR database, on that day:

". . . .The DOJ has issued a subpoena requesting information related to the Company’s marketing and selling activities with respect to Temodar, PegIntron and Intron A, from January 1, 2004 to the present, in a federal health care investigation under criminal statutes. The Company is cooperating with the DOJ’s investigation. . . ."

It was also mentioned in commentary, here, back then.

Namaste, and do stop back!