[Ip-health] Pfizer agrees to sell darifenacin to Novartis in preparation for takeover of Pharmacia

[Joy Spencer]

NEW YORK TIMES
Pfizer to Sell Drug to Rival to Soothe Regulators
March 19, 2003
By ALISON LANGLEY

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/19/business/worldbusiness/19DRUG.html?ex=1049257906&ei=1&en=dd4213a9f9e08ab6

GENEVA, March 18 - Under pressure to sell some businesses
to win regulatory approval for its proposed $53 billion
takeover of Pharmacia, Pfizer has agreed to sell a new
incontinence treatment, darifenacin, to Novartis for $225
million, Novartis said today.

While Novartis said it hoped for the same amount of revenue
from the drug that Pfizer was forecasting - $1 billion a
year - analysts said they were not convinced that Novartis
could achieve that. Novartis has a smaller sales force,
they said, and it is not as oriented toward primary-care
doctors as is Pfizer's sales force. Some speculated that
Pfizer chose to sell the drug to Novartis because Pfizer
saw Novartis as a weaker competitor than the other
potential buyer, GlaxoSmithKline.

Pfizer had been preparing to market the drug under the
brand name Enablex and had filed applications with
regulators in Europe and the United States in December. But
winning antitrust approval for the Pharmacia deal, which
Pfizer hopes to close next month, has obliged Pfizer to
sell it and several other drugs in fields where Pfizer and
Pharmacia together would be too dominant. Pharmacia already
markets two incontinence drugs, Detrol and Detrol LA,
bringing in $757 million in sales last year.

Together, Pharmacia and Pfizer would be the world's No. 1
drug company, with 11 percent of global sales.

Buying darifenacin will help Novartis, based in Basel,
generate sales growth at a time when it has few new
products in the pipeline, and when some important patents
are due to expire. But the company has plenty of cash on
hand.

Analysts at Pictet et Cie said that $500 million a year
might be a more realistic forecast for the new drug's
sales. They pointed out that it would reach market at about
the same time as Prexige, a Novartis-developed drug
treating the same condition.

Still, about 17 million patients in the United States and
up to 200 million people worldwide have overactive-bladder
problems. Up to half the women in the United States older
than 65 are said to have symptoms.

--
Joy Spencer
Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367
Washington D.C. 20036

1.202.387.8030
1.202.234.5176