The Morning After is when you can buy your medicine yourself

Barr Pharmaceuticals recently announced that sales of the Plan B “morning-after” pill nearly doubled last year, exceeding its expectations, vs. its previous Rx-only annual sales.

Morality issues aside, Plan B's sales growth indicates the power of the patient (read: consumer) to seek out clinically proven drugs when they are given freer access to them

Look at nicotine replacement therapy. Doubled after the patches went OTC from Rx. Look at the recent brilliant success that GSK is having with alli (read: Orlistat/Xenical).

By reducing barriers to access, patients and consumers are able to take control of their own health needs.

Weight management. Unwanted pregnancy. Smoking cessation.

The public health benefits for these “lifestyle” issues are tremendous.

Pharmaceutical companies spend millions upon millions of dollars addressing physician writing of their medicines. But look what happens when you remove the Rx/Physician barrier. Greater use. Greater compliance. Better results.

More and more pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare companies need to understand the barriers and the drivers to compliance. The results can be better sales, better compliance, better health.

Viagra - Brains over Blood

Many people say that men think with their (blank) and not their brain when it comes to women.

Well, now a new study from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Viagra indicates that the drug may do both.

Viagra, known generically as sildenafil, raised levels of the hormone oxytocin in rats. This hormone is involved in nursing and childbirth, but also in orgasm and feelings of sexual pleasure.

Viagra inhibits the phosphodiesterase type 5 enzyme which breaks down other compounds. This action increases blood flow in the muscles and the posterior pituitary. This, in turn, boosts oxytocin, at least in the rats.

All those late-night comedian and water cooler jokes about Viagra tend to focus on a man’s needs or desire. However, when you get down to it and you are not a kid anymore, it is really about mutual satisfaction.

If pharmaceutical companies can do more to capture the mental aspect of why and how patients should take their medicines, they will trigger the real needs and desires of compliance. Unfortunately, most pharma companies focus their marketing development on physicians and use those 30 second direct-to-consumers ads to encourage presentation – but not to ensure compliance.

They miss the real links between motivation and desire and realizing the real and long-term benefits of medicine for their patients. In the case of Viagra, the link between brain and blood may really be real. If a pharma can make that link, for other “lifestyle” drugs that address hypertension, diabetes and lipid management, that will be a break-through.

Pharma Bolt-Ons

How should we think about bolt-on mergers for Big Pharma?

Recent deals have included Schering-Plough's pending buyout of Akzo Nobel's Organon BioSciences unit for $14.4 billion, AstraZeneca's pending acquisition of MedImmune for $15.6 billion, and Mylan Laboratories' pending takeover of Merck KGaA's generics business for $6.7 billion.

It is really pretty simple. It is all about filling portfolio gaps and adding new products and capabilities without all the hassles associated with major acquisitions.

Less dilutive, less complex, more complimentary.

This approach is sound from both an asset management and asset acquisition point of view.

This approach isn't new. Warner-Lambert acquired Agouron in 1999 to get its eye business and library of compounds, a nice simple complimentary acquisition.

Then Pfizer, to preserve its access to Lipitor, bought Warner-Lambert and then, to preserve its access to Celebrex, Pharmacia. Ouch, indigestion that even Nexium couldn't fix. Getting Lipitor has buoyed Pfizer for years, but Celebrex ran into problems and millions of dollars in shed expenses and thousands of lost jobs, hasn't been able to salve the Pfizer stock prize or offset the rising tide of patent expirations.

Making more strategic bolt-on acquisitions over recent years could have added more products to maintain and to ultimately grow the company's product portfolio. Witness what Pfizer is now doing in vaccines.

Pfizer Vaccines Research is a new area of research committed to the belief that biotherapeutics, including vaccines, will grow to form 20 percent of the Pfizer portfolio, leading to the launch of one biotherapeutic product a year, every year, by 2016.

Here is a strategically sound bolt-on combination of small and large molecules.

Look for more of these kind of acquisitions in the future across the industry. The pressures of the marketplace demand it.