Want a surefire way to shake up a drug market? Introduce new medication
options that make it easier for patients to manage their disease. MS drugmakers
would know; their market is all of a sudden full of them.
For one, a game-changing trio
of pills is providing an alternative to injections. Novartis' ($NVS) Gilenya hit first in September 2010, followed by Sanofi's ($SNY) Aubagio and Biogen Idec's ($BIIB) Tecfidera. Two of those three, Gilenya and Tecfidera, nabbed spots on our list of Top 15 drug launch
superstars after hitting the ground
running. They're primed to keep moving up the food chain, too.
Then, there are new,
long-acting meds like the 40-mg version of best-seller Copaxone, which hit the market just in time for maker Teva ($TEVA) to start converting patients ahead of a bumped-up May patent expiration.
With a Supreme Court appeal in its patent case set to begin soon, Teva's seeing
patients switch over to the new formula--injected thrice weekly, as opposed to
daily--at a rate that has so far both surprised and impressed analysts. Biogen
Idec, too, recently snagged the FDA's favor for its own long-lasting med, a
follow-up to Avonex--dubbed Plegridy--that requires injection only once every two weeks.
Drugmakers are looking for
more subtle yet significant ways to make their MS meds more attractive to
patients, too. Take Biogen's Avonex Pen, for instance, green-lighted by the FDA
the year before last. The Massachusetts biotech billed it as the first
"intramuscular autoinjector" approved for MS and one it hoped would
reduce "injection anxiety" and "pain."