Posted by SFY on May 21, 2006, at 16:52:37
In reply to Re: Emsam: aabag, posted by ttee on May 20, 2006, at 12:06:44
> Even BMS in the financial statements estimates peak Emsam sales to be around $200 million per year. Compare that to Effexor that makes over 3 Billion per year. Since the average new drug takes $800 million to get FDA approval, it is going to take many years of only making $200 million per year for BMS to breakeven on Emsam.
Ignoring the fact that the $800 million stat has very little basis in reality (It arose from one study almost 20 years ago that has been adjusted for inflation ever since), Emsam isn't an average new drug by any means.
The bulk of the figure cited includes the money spent on drugs that didn't make it through the development process. Emsam, being based on the already developed selegiline, isn't one of these drugs.
Somerset didn't have to put any money into actual drug discovery and development. Selegiline was already out there for the taking. While not a small task, all that needed to be done was to develop a transdermal delivery system for selegiline and then test its efficacy and side effect profile.
poster:SFY
thread:642628
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060520/msgs/646646.html