Numbers wars coming?

Sep/19/2008 02:35
robots
Is there a numbers war coming in the osteoporosis and psoriasis markets? J&J this week said that in the 903-patient trial, participants with moderate to severe psoriasis received one of two dose levels of ustekinumab, or Enbrel. The main goal was to track the proportion of patients in each group who achieved at least a 75% reduction in psoriasis at 12 weeks, as measured by an index assessing the surface area and severity of the disease, which causes skin lesions. J&J said 68% of those taking the lower dose of ustekinumab and 74% taking the higher dose achieved at least a 75% reduction in disease, versus 57% of Enbrel users reaching that mark. This could lead to a battle over numbers and data and with so much at stake here it's going to be a hard fought battle.


Amgen's Enbrel is worth more than $5 billion worldwide and you can bet that they are not about to sit around and wait for J&J's new drug to be approved. On the other front, Amgen is releasing some positive data for their new osteoporosis drug which reduced spinal fractures by 68% in a study of postmenopausal women, bolstering the case that the bone-strengthening drug could become an important treatment for osteoporosis and other bone-related maladies in the $7 billion osteoporosis market. While Amgen's study didn't compare D-mab with current therapies, a big mistake in my opinion, the results were generally at least as good as or better than those achieved with the current most popular oral treatments known as bisphosphonates.

Merck & Co.'s Fosamax has been the most popular, but it recently became available as a generic known as alendronate. In two other studies that did compare D-mab with alendronate, D-mab was superior in improving bone density and in reducing turnover of bone cells -- both surrogate markers associated with reduced risk of fracture. So the osteoporosis market, which has seen DTC for once a month and one a year treatments might move to a new battlefront: which is better at preventing fractures with less side effects.

Amgen is saying in response to the J&J data that Enbrel has been on the market for a while and they have safety data but if the new J&J drug provides better outcomes with less side effects it might get a boost in the market. Stuck in the middle of these battles is going to be the patient/consumer. Whom do they believe ? They will undoubtedly turn to the Web for more information but with so much information out there whom are they going to trust and where will they turn? Will convenience trump data outcomes?

It's going to be interesting to see these battles unfold as they go punch and counter punch. Ultimately it will be up to the doctors to recommend treatment options but physicians now may recommend either or for both the osteoporosis and psoriasis markets.
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