Where is the leadership when it mattered?

Apr/01/2008 05:53 Filed in: Pharma Business
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While the makers of Vytorin were trying to bail water from a massive leak the makers of Crestor were putting a halt on clinical trials because the news was too good not to share. AstraZeneca PLC said Monday it is stopping a clinical study of blockbuster drug Crestor early because the cholesterol-lowering pill showed clear benefits over a placebo. So it looks like the first line of treatment could be generic statins, followed by Lipitor and Crestor. Vytorin? Well the damage of holding data is clearly done and it may never recover enough to make a difference in the blockbuster cholesterol market.



More and more questions are coming into view about the release of the data around the Enhance study for Vytorin. Given the perception in the market around pharma companies today most think that the data was held because it did not support the continued use of the drugs, especially with such strong clinical data around Lipitor and Crestor. While the Chairman of Schering is trying his best to assure people that it's only a small leak everyone is already scrambling for life jackets. The Schering board on Cafe Pharma had over 70 people on it early in the morning and was the most active company on the board.

Yes it used to be that when studies were completed drug companies could spend 6-8 months "analyzing" the data but today, in an information economy, that is unacceptable and when you delay the release of data people immediately start asking "what are you hiding". Now you have the anchors on the Nightly News telling patients who are taking Vytorin to go back to their doctors to ask for a different medication. The folks in the Schering PR department are going to need a lot of stress therapy to help them cope with this nightmare.

In today's era of immediate transparency companies need to release news as soon as they get it, whether good or bad. This is lesson number one. If the news is bad then everyone needs to get ready for the storm and it's the CEO's job to get the ship to safer water, not to analyze and manipulate to save sales. In this case 70% of Schering's profits came from these drugs so they were obviously trying to do anything they could do to "save the franchise". Now they have to face skeptical customers and oh, by the way, Congress wants to know what happened and Wall Street is using Schering stock for place mats.

It's a shame that this had to happen this way. There were so many things Schering could have done to stop the derailment but when the health of your company is tied so much to one drug that is the risk you take. Crestor and Lipitor will be happy to take up the slack and Schering shareholders are left to ask "where was the leadership when it really mattered?"
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