AstraZeneca’s Crestor Targets High Risk Patients, Delivers High Sales
This article was originally published in The Pink Sheet Daily
Executive Summary
Crestor sales grew 47% in the second quarter; entry of generic simvastatin caused some expected “disruption” in the marketplace.
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AstraZeneca's cholesterol therapy Crestor (rosuvastatin) has seen improved uptake with cardiologists in recent months, CEO David Brennan said during the company's second quarter earnings call July 27. The exec attributed the success to the company's strategy to target higher risk patients. "I really do back up to about 18 months ago, when we repositioned our approach with Crestor in the marketplace to make sure it was targeting toward higher risk patients....That repositioning has served us well in establishing Crestor, because of its profile," Brennan said. Crestor's U.S. sales grew 47% to $271 mil. from the year-ago period. Its share of total prescriptions in the statin market was 8% for the week ending July 14, up 1.7 percentage points since the beginning of the year, the firm said. Despite what the company expected would be some "disruption" to the marketplace with entry of generic simvastatin in late June, AstraZeneca maintains Crestor's future will be strong. "As an organization, [we] believe that there's a place for generic statins in the marketplace, especially for those patients that are suffering from mild cholesterol," Exec VP-North America Tony Zook said in an interview with "The Pink Sheet" DAILY. "With Crestor, we've always positioned it for the moderate- to high-risk patients; therefore, we've seen our ability to grow through the past four to five months. We expect to continue to grow with that moderate- to high-risk segment, and the early weeks' data would indicate that," Zook said. During the call, Brennan estimated that half of the total available patients in the cholesterol market are high risk. Further, "because the people with the higher risk factors tend to be ones who show up in the treatment pool, moreso than the mild patients," the proportion of high-risk patients in the treated patient population is likely "a substantial portion," Brennan said. AstraZeneca has published data throughout the first half of the year to emphasize Crestor's efficacy. Data released in the second quarter show that Crestor in combination with Merck/Schering-Plough's Zetia (ezetimibe) demonstrated an unprecedented 70% reduction in LDL cholesterol (1 (Also see "Crestor Combination Treatment Shows Unprecedented 70% LDL-C Reduction" - Pink Sheet, 19 Jun, 2006.)). More data are expected this year: results from the ongoing 24-month METEOR study, evaluating the effect of rosuvastatin on progression of carotid atherosclerosis, are expected by year-end. "There's a lot of good information coming out, absolutely reinforcing the safety and the effectiveness profile of this drug, and it stands out as being at the top of the range. Therefore, even when some of the first generation drugs are off patent, they're not going to get the same kind of control of the lipids that we've seen with Crestor," Development Director John Patterson said. The company announced earlier this month its plans to initiate two parallel programs to look at Crestor in a fixed-dose combination with Abbott's TriCor (fenofibrate) and with Abbott's investigational ABT-335 (2 (Also see "Abbott/AstraZeneca Come Together Over Statin/Fibrate Combo" - Pink Sheet, 5 Jul, 2006.)). AstraZeneca reported second quarter worldwide sales of $6.6 bil., up 10% compared to the year-ago period. -Kathryn Phelps |