...Developing & Marketing A Blockbuster Drug: Eli Lilly’s Experience with Prozac BME-6 B. HBS CASE: “Developing and Marketing a Blockbuster Drug: Lessons from Eli Lilly’s experience with Prozac” 1. What factors contributed to Prozac becoming a blockbuster drug? Explain how each factor contributed and what management decisions helped the drug’s success. The following factors contributed to Prozac’s success: • Prozac’s low side effects and toxicity: The many drugs that were available before Prozac, such as tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) for treating depression, were too toxic or tricky to use except by trained psychiatrists. In the early 1970s, Ray Fuller, a senior Lilly pharmacologist, had been following new European research showing that a low concentration of serotonin in the brain was linked to depression. A Lilly chemist Bryan Malloy had synthesized some compounds intended to boost serotonin without the side effects of the TCAs. Human research data produced consistent and positive data. The new lower dose human studies revealed that 20 mg once a day was better than placebo and just as effective as TCAs taken multiple times a day. Prozac also produced fewer side effects, and was not lethal in overdose. Dropout rates on Prozac were comparable to the other TCAs and lower than for placebo that contributed to its success. • Thoughtful Marketing Launch Plan: When Prozac was launched in January 1988, Ken Cohen, the Marketing...
Words: 7816 - Pages: 32
...“The Indian pharmaceutical industry is a success story providing employment for millions and ensuring that essential drugs at affordable prices are available to the vast population of this sub-continent.” Richard Gerster The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry today is in the front rank of India’s science-based industries with wide ranging capabilities in the complex field of drug manufacture and technology. It ranks very high in the third world, in terms of technology, quality and range of medicines manufactured. From simple headache pills to sophisticated antibiotics and complex cardiac compounds, almost every type of medicine is now made indigenously. Playing a key role in promoting and sustaining development in the vital field of medicines, Indian Pharma Industry boasts of quality producers and many units approved by regulatory authorities in USA and UK. International companies associated with this sector have stimulated, assisted and spearheaded this dynamic development in the past 53 years and helped to put India on the pharmaceutical map of the world. Growth Scenario in 2010 India's pharmaceutical industry is now the third largest in the world in terms of volume. Its rank is 14th in terms of value. Between September 2008 and September 2009, the total turnover of India's pharmaceuticals industry was US$ 21.04 billion. The domestic market was worth US$ 12.26 billion. This was reported by the Department of Pharmaceuticals, Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers. As per...
Words: 1244 - Pages: 5
...1) Is the monopoly on patented pharmaceuticals warranted? What barrier to entry prevents the re-importation into the United States of pharmaceuticals sold at lower prices abroad (say, in Canada)? Pharmaceutical companies try to maintain a monopoly in the early stages of a drug in order to recover R&D investment. During this period of exclusivity they will try to make a fair profit. This is not a monopoly in the true sense of the word because this period is limited in time. It is perhaps better to describe it as a limited warranty. There are also other limitations. Pharmaceutical companies in some countries may not respect intellectual property and may copy or produce generic drugs even before the patent expires. An important criterion of a monopoly is price control. However, in many countries, a governmental agency is responsible for setting the prices of drugs, making the influence of the manufacturers somewhat limited. This puts pressure on the manufacturers to seek overseas markets in order to maximize their chances of recovering R&D costs and to earn a profit within the period covered by the patent. By so doing the market for re-importation and parallel imports is opened. Some of the prices that the pharmaceutical manufacturers end up accepting under these circumstances do not define a true monopoly. There are several barriers to entry that prevents re-importation into the US of drugs sold at lower prices. These include the following: Price difference ...
Words: 858 - Pages: 4
...College Students and Drug Abuse The irresponsible use of drugs and alcohol by college students has always been an issue for university campuses, but the problem has become more and more frequent and has grown in familiarity with every passing generation. In past years, the problem has not only multiplied in frequency, but has also grown in danger. Now students are abusing not only recreational drugs like Marijuana and Cocaine, but also prescription drugs like Ritalin and others like it such as Adderall. "As many as 20 percent of college students have used Ritalin or Adderall to study, write papers, and take exams..." (Jacobs 2). Medications like Ritalin are used to provide energy and concentration when a person cannot achieve them through regular means. Students take medication like Ritalin to help them deal with loss of sleep so they can stay up all night to cram and still do well in class. Students are now using similar medications like Adderall that are released over long periods of time so they can keep an energy high throughout an entire day instead of just one or two class periods. On some campuses, if you’re not using Ritalin or Adderall, you are just increasing your risk to fall behind. As one Columbia student said, “If you don’t take them, you’ll be at a disadvantage to everyone else” (Jacobs 3). This previous statement is unfortunately all too true, these types of prescription medications are so popular and commonplace that students attending certain...
Words: 937 - Pages: 4
...Smell/Air Cedar shavings disguise other odors, carbon filters and an Ozone generator (neutralise the fragrance.) Air conditioner water (don't leak outside, the water contains cannabis fragrance.) Hot air into water then sink/toilet Pro-cannabis arguments DEA and FDA criticise the use of herbs as medicine, they say that plants contain a variable mix of compounds and cannot provide a precisely defined drug effect. According to the pharma industry, medicines are synthetic, single-ingredient “silver bullets” that focus upon solitary metabolic pathways in our physiological systems. Herbalists, however – applaud the poly-pharmacy of herbal remedies and claim two advantages over single-ingredient drugs: The multiple mechanisms may work to improve therapeutic activity in a cumulative or synergistic manner. Herbs may also contain compounds that mitigate the side effects of their predominant active ingredients. Thus, cannabis has been characterised as a “synergistic shotgun” in contrast with synthetic, single-ingredient “silver bullets.” The many ingredients modulate our health via several metabolic pathways, gently nudging our system towards homeostasis. This kind of “multitasking” makes cannabis impossible to evaluate, according to the pharma industry. But multitasking avoids the unbalanced distortion of solitary metabolic pathways as produced by synthetic, single-ingredient silver bullets such as Virox. Cannabis list of ingredients: THC – Tetrahydrocannabiol...
Words: 764 - Pages: 4
...a) Why does JJM want to switch Pepcid to OTC when the patent is good for another six years? What would be the optimal time to switch and factors that affect this decision? Would it be the same for all competitors? Firstly, the OTC (over-the-counter) market growth is a huge attraction to pharmaceutical companies, great potential profit can be expected from OTC market. Fierce competition is not avoidable after the patent expires, which may drive down the profit margin. However, some examples, such as Listerine, indicated that OTC product can maintain in the market for a much longer time, because consumers have the tendency to self-diagnose their common ailments, and obtain a drug without prescription. Secondly, Pepcid is a safe drug, and its indication is a common chronic problem in public that is relatively easy to self-diagnose and self-treat. By making such a drug an OTC product, the company can gain access to a larger consumer base and thus gain more profit. Pepcid as a prescription drug has already gained its market as a brand name drug. This creates a demand for the general public for OTC version of Pepcid. Additionally, usually FDA takes several years to process the approval of a prescription-to-OTC switch. Before the patent expires, JJM can take the advantage of patent protection and enter the OTC without competition and thus occupy a larger consumer market earlier. Factors include indication, drug safety, and brand awareness. The indication has to be a common and...
Words: 1071 - Pages: 5
...Ethics in the Pharmaceutical Industry Business Law Ivy Tech Community College Tamara Baxter September 20, 2013 The pharmaceutical industry has a difficult task when it comes to doing the right thing, put people or profits first (Weber, 2006). To keep their operations operating they must approach a duties-based ethical approach because the lives of their stakeholders are literally at risk. A religious ethical standard would mean not to falsely proclaim that a drug does something that it does not. An example would be to say that a drug would help you lose weight quicker without diet or exercise. Pharmaceutical companies claim that they approach ethics determined by outcome based ethics, meaning the greatest good for the greatest number of people (Miller & Jentz, 2011). Pharmaceutical companies paying for new drug research brings up the ethics dilemma that the research is accurately reported to the FDA, or are there findings that are omitted to get the drug approved (Helsom, 2010). Another problem with this is the amount of money researchers and doctors are paid (Helsom, 2010). Could there hefty paychecks sway their findings? The Ethical dilemma over doctors accepting gifts and free samples of drugs is of great concern. Should sales reps be able to give doctors incentives to prescribe the medication that they are marketing? Recently some Academic research hospitals have forbidden there doctors from accepting gifts (Negron, 2009). The...
Words: 769 - Pages: 4
...The Advantages of Having a Bachelor’s Degree in the Nursing Field The differences of an associate’s degree level nurse and a bachelor’s degree level nurse could have a large impact on the patient population. To meet the needs of patients we are seeing today, nurses must adjust their mentality to provide the best outcome for their patients. A need for higher learning of nurses has come to play and the associate’s degree level nurse is no longer sufficient to meet the needs of the patients. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) has compiled a fact sheet of the reasons higher education is needed. In there, it states, that patients who were cared for by nurses with a bachelor’s degree had higher positive patient outcomes, fewer mortality rates, and less medication errors than patients were cared for by associate’s degree level nurses. In 2013, magnet level hospitals have required nurse leaders and nurse management positions to hold a bachelor’s degree in nursing (AACN). Magnet hospitals are known for their superior nursing services due to a higher percentage of bachelor and higher degree of nurses that provide more positive patient outcomes (AACN). Magnet hospitals also have lower mortality rates of inpatients and lower odds for failure-to-rescue rates than non-magnet hospitals (AACN). In the Journal of Advanced Nursing, research done by Dilles, Stichele, Van Rompaey, Van Bortel, and Elseviers (2010), show the difference education level plays on medication safety...
Words: 596 - Pages: 3
...Pharmacodynamic the action and effects of drugs on the tissues of the body The copyrighted name that is given to the drug by its manufacturer is the? brand name, trade , or proprietary name and is accompanied by a symbol(an R with a circle around it, meaning "registered," or TM, meaning " trademark") next to it. The Physician's Desk Reference (PDR) Is an annual commercial listing of phermaceuticals in the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with the responsibility of enforcing safety standards in the manufacture of drugs, foods, and cosmetics. Drugs that are considered to be teratogenic Are capable of causing birth defects Schedule II & III are dispensed By perscription only Schedule III Prescription maybe phoned in to pharmacy Schedule 5 buyer must be what age to purchase 18 show id and sign for medications antagonism when two drugs have their effects weakened by being given together the effect is against helping in the fight against disease synergism a condition of working together polypharmacy an individual will take medications that are not known to his or her doctor excreted removed from the body A DAME Absorption , Distribution , Action , Metabolism , Excretion The word treat can be broken into 5 different areas curative ( killing fungal infection),diagnostic(ingesting a substance to be used for imaging purposes), Prophylactic (preventive as in vaccine) , replacement (hormone replacement), or therapeutic...
Words: 682 - Pages: 3
...In medicine, compliance (also adherence or capacitance) describes the degree to which a patient correctly follows medical advice. Most commonly, it refers to medication or drug compliance, but it can also apply to other situations such as medical device use, self care, self-directed exercises, or therapy sessions. Both the patient and the health-care provider affect compliance, and a positive physician-patient relationship is the most important factor in improving compliance,[1] although the high cost of prescription medication also plays a major role.[2] Compliance is commonly confused with concordance. Concordance is the process by which a patient and clinician make decisions together about treatment.[3] Non-compliance is a major obstacle to the effective delivery of health care. Estimates from the World Health Organization (2003) indicate that only about 50% of patients with chronic diseases living in developed countries follow treatment recommendations.[1] In particular, low rates of adherence to therapies for asthma, diabetes, and hypertension are thought to contribute substantially to the human and economic burden of those conditions.[1] Compliance rates may be overestimated in the medical literature, as compliance is often high in the setting of a formal clinical trial but drops off in a "real-world" setting.[4] Major barriers to compliance are thought to include the complexity of modern medication regimens, poor "health literacy" and lack of comprehension of treatment...
Words: 1512 - Pages: 7
...Key Performance Indicators for Pfizer and Merck Overview In recent years, auditors have increased the amount of attention they give to nonfinancial measures because these measures can be very helpful in assessing the risk of revenue frauds. Most frauds of this nature involve accounting personnel falsifying financial information with the intent of materially misstating the financial statements. Nonfinancial measures are much more difficult for accounting personnel to manipulate, especially those produced independently; therefore, auditors have increasingly used these nonfinancial measures to help them detect fraud. In order to utilize the nonfinancial information of a company for auditing purposes, auditors must select Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the company or industry. By compiling KPIs for a company and its competitor(s), the audit team can compare the nonfinancial measures and the effects they might have on the financial statements. The purpose of this paper is to identify three KPIs for Pfizer, Inc. and compare these measures with those of Merck & Company, Inc. Both of these companies focus mainly on the development and sale of pharmaceutical drugs. The success of companies in this industry relies greatly on research and development of new drugs. New drugs stay in the research and development phase until they are granted FDA approval. For this reason, we have selected number of FDA approvals as a KPI for Pfizer and Merck. The pharmaceutical...
Words: 1624 - Pages: 7
...Date: 11/17/11 To: Lead Economist Laura From: Student Subject: Report for Policymaker Pete According to Innovation.org, “Patent protection in the United States gives inventors the exclusive right to sell an invention for up to 20 years before others may copy and sell it.” (page 3) Most pharmaceutical patents only last for 10 years however. This protects an inventor’s rights and allows them to profit from their idea before others are able to copy it. In the case of pharmaceutical companies, patents prohibit other companies from making generic versions of a drug that is still under patent. Pharmaceutical companies can extend their patents by seeking new patents on specific compounds such as single versions of drugs which can exist in both “left-handed” and “right-handed” forms. (Apotex) Every time a new patent is granted, the patent time starts over. This process is known as “evergreening” and can extend the amount of time a drug is under a patent for years. Pharmaceutical companies invest huge amounts of money into developing new drugs. Without patents other companies would be able to copy their drug without investing all of the money into research. Then they could probably sell the same drug at a lower price since they do not have to cover the cost of researching it. Without patent protection companies would not be willing to invest the substantial amounts of money into research if they knew that another company could copy their product. So more drugs...
Words: 560 - Pages: 3
...Major Drug Interaction: Applies to: venlafaxine, mirtazapine MONITOR CLOSELY: Concomitant use of agents with serotonergic may potentiate the risk of serotonin syndrome, which is a rare but serious and potentially fatal condition thought to result from hyperstimulation of brainstem 5-HT1A and 2A receptors. Symptoms of the serotonin syndrome may include mental status changes such as irritability, altered consciousness, confusion, hallucinations, and coma; autonomic dysfunction such as tachycardia, hyperthermia, diaphoresis, shivering, blood pressure lability, and mydriasis; neuromuscular abnormalities such as hyperreflexia, myoclonus, tremor, rigidity, and ataxia; and gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal cramping, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. MANAGEMENT: In general, the concomitant use of multiple serotonergic agents should be avoided if possible, or otherwise approached with caution if potential benefit is deemed to outweigh the risk. Patients should be closely monitored for symptoms of the serotonin syndrome during treatment. Particular caution is advised when increasing the dosages of these agents. The potential risk for serotonin syndrome should be considered even when administering serotonergic agents sequentially, as some agents may demonstrate a prolonged elimination half-life. For example, a 5-week washout period is recommended following use of fluoxetine before administering another serotonergic agent. If serotonin syndrome develops or is suspected during...
Words: 5976 - Pages: 24
...Plants and gardens have a greater purpose than simply to be an eye catching source of food. While mainstream medicine largely continues to deny the inherent healing capacity of natural plants and herbs, the insect world is abuzz with activities that confirm the plant world to be nature's medicine cabinet. According to a new study published in the journal Ecology Letters, the Monarch butterfly routinely uses medicinal plants to help its offspring resist disease and infection. Researchers observed that Monarch butterflies prefer to lay their egg larvae on milkweed leaves, so they decided to investigate why this is the case. They discovered that milkweed plants contain vital compounds that help the larvae to stay healthy. "We have shown that some species of milkweed, the larva's food plants, can reduce parasite infection in monarchs," explained Jaap de Roode, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University, and author of the study. "[W]e have also found that infected female butterflies prefer to lay their eggs on plants that will make their offspring less sick." There are many types of milkweed plants, and some contain very high levels of cardenolides. Cardenolides are toxic to predators, but safe for Monarch butterflies. So when Monarch butterflies eat milkweed rich in the chemical, or lay their larvae on it, they build up a natural resistance to invading predators. The same chemical also helps to stop parasites that can develop in the butterflies' intestines and kill them...
Words: 334 - Pages: 2
...Pharmacy Service Improvement at CVS Rhiannon Graham PID: 3634552 Redesign the Pharmacy Service Process at CVS Customer Value Store (CVS) is one of the largest retail drugstores in the United States. CVS has over 4,000 stores and generated revenue of 24.2 billion dollars in 2002. CVS grew at the same rate as other major pharmacy chains, but continued to lose millions of customers due to service issues. These problems led to the implementation of the Pharmacy Service Initiative (PSI). In observations of various stores, as well as interviews with employees, 67 major problems were identified. The steps in the service process include drop-off, data entry, production (prescription fulfillment), quality assurance, waiting for pickup, and the pickup. Each of these areas contain possibilities for improvement. The first step of the process is the drop off. This is the first interaction between the customer and the CVS employee. The problem that occurred at this step was the drop off window was sometimes unstaffed by the employee. This problem arose because the only work station available for employees to use was located near the pickup window. A potential solution to this issue is to put another work station at the drop off window. This would also allow for employees to verify all customer information at the drop off instead of at pick up which would shorten customer wait times at the pickup window and allow those transactions to run more smoothly. When the customers drop off...
Words: 1087 - Pages: 5
