I'm at Johnson & Johnson's Pharmaceutical Business Review today. Most of the day is dedicated to geeky drug R&D stuff, but Joaquin Duato started of the morning with a run-down of how J&J's pharmaceutical division is doing in terms of cold, hard sales. Note that these are J&J's slides and data, presented on the company's home turf in New Brunswick.
Two J&J drugs of interest:
- Zytiga, a pill for prostate cancer that J&J acquired before it was approved, that is competing with Xtandi, a competing pill from Medivation. Duato said that two-thirds of Xtandi use has been in patients who already took Zytiga, and that a recent poll of doctors predicted Zytiga would remain the top seller in 2016.
- Xarelto, a new blood thinner to replace warfarin in preventing strokes among patients with atrial fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder. It is competing with Pradaxa, from Boehringer Ingelheim, and Eliquis, from Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Here are the relevant slides, showing how many times these drugs were prescribed compared to their competitors:
Benjamin Davies, an Assistant Professor of Urology at the University of Pittsburgh, doesn't buy that Zytiga sales will hold up. He tweets:
@matthewherper @forbes I highly doubt this statement "a recent poll of doctors predicted Zytiga would remain the top seller in 2016."
— daviesbj (@daviesbj) May 23, 2013
.@matthewherper @forbes I think J$J are misleading you - particular if MDVN trial hits OS which zytiga did not. @biotechstockrsr
— daviesbj (@daviesbj) May 23, 2013
And on Xarelto:
@matthewherper $JNJ Xarelto v Eliquis chart misleading—at apprval4 AF, X already apprvd4 VTEprev but E not. TRx nos wrt indicatn unreliable.
— Roy Friedman (@DewDiligence) May 23, 2013