More Videos
SPECIAL REPORT
MOST SHARED
- Kuoni CEO Sees Recovery in Travel Sector
- US Markets Bracing for Selloff On Worries About Dubai's Debt
- Gold Retreats from Record High as Dollar Rebounds
- No Thanksgiving Rest for Retailers in Sales Race
- China Unveils Carbon Target Ahead of Copenhagen
- Fannie Mae to Tighten Lending Standards: Report
- Attraction of Switzerland to Businesses
- Dubai Struggles to Ease Debt Fears; Investors Rattled
- Great Britain, No Longer That Great: Investor
- 4 Thanksgiving Week Buys For Your Portfolio: Market Pros
- There's a 'Great Chance' For a Double-Dip Recession: Strategist
- Revenge of the Gangsta Nerds
- Will TCU See The "Flutie Effect?"
- Retail Earnings and Sales to Improve in Q4: Analyst
- Consumers Catching the Holiday Spirit
- It's Beginning To Look A Lot More Riskless
- Crescenzi: Claims Level Suggests End to Job Losses
- Hedge Funds Take Early Lead in Warren Buffett's 'Big Bet'
- US Markets Bracing for Selloff on Dubai Debt Worries
- US Dollar Falls to 14-Year Low Against the Yen
- ING Prices Share Issue at Hefty Discount
- No Thanksgiving Rest for Retailers in Sales Race
- UK's Darling to Downgrade 2009 Growth Forecast
- Tommy Hilfiger's Estate in Conn. Sells for $20 Million
- Cheap Robotic Hamsters Are Holiday's Unlikely Craze
- Almunia Set to Take Neelie Kroes' EU Competition Job
- Fannie Mae to Tighten Lending Standards: Report
PHARMA'S MARKET VIDEO
RSS FEED
Pharma's Market
Text Size 
 |
CNBC.com |
]was expected to get a Food and Drug Administration decision on the first-ever one-a-day impotence drug. Right now, the company sells Cialis for use as needed. But men could pop this one every day--like an aspirin or multi-vitamin--so the drug would always be "on board." Yeah, I know this will lead to a whole new genre of late-night TV jokes about the nearly 10-year-old erectile dysfunction (ED) drug class. But in all seriousness, urologists (the doctors who specialize in treating ED) say there's a market for a one-a-day.
Dr. Kevin McVary at the Northwestern University School of Medicine, who does consulting and/or works on clinical trials for the ED drugmakers, says there's a "sizeable minority" of patients who would take Cialis every day. He told me that he works with couples who don't like their foreplay interrupted by what can be a mood-killing pause to take an ED drug and then sit around waiting for it to take effect. With a one-a-day version, he says, that worry is gone.
Cialis is the one that lasts 36 hours. And it takes effect faster than Pfizer's [PFE
Loading...
()
] Viagra and Levitra from Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline [GSK
Loading...
()
] and Schering-Plough [SGP
Loading...
()
] . Viagra and Levitra also only last a few hours or so. Sales growth of the ED drugs has slowed, but it's still around a $3-billion-a-year business. Cialis sales, for example, were up 27% in the third quarter.
But here's the rub. A Lilly spokesperson says the FDA has asked for more information on one-a-day Cialis, so a decision on approving it will likely be delayed beyond today. Deutsche Bank's Barbara Ryan is out with a research note to clients this afternoon saying the agency wants "additional analyses of existing data". So, that presumably means Lilly doesn't have to go back to square one and do more tests, it just has to crunch more numbers or something.
But you gotta love Ryan's take on all this: "Once daily dosing could appeal to men with ED who are eternal optimists or have relatively active sexual lives, and we expect it could provide some modest incremental growth to the Cialis franchise." Deutsche owns at least one percent of LLY, makes a market in the stock and has done and wants to do more investment banking for the company.
The Lilly spokesperson told me the drug is intended for men "who anticipate having sex at least twice a week." It's already approved in Europe where Lilly is launching it now. American men will just have to wait.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes