Word: acids
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...Tagamet] is to shore up the battlements before Zantac," says Susan Coleman, managing partner of NCI Consulting in Princeton, New Jersey. When Zantac 75 wins approval for over-the-counter sales in the U.S., she predicts, "World War III starts." She notes that while other over-the-counter acid blockers had been on the British market for a year before Zantac 75 appeared in January, it took only three months to overwhelm the competition. "Zantac on the market will be a significant competitor," says Robert Kniffin, vice president of Johnson & Johnson's external communications. "We shall see." (As if Zantac...
...share of the entire antacid market. "Pepcid had a window of opportunity, and it exploited it well in the marketplace," says Silvermine Consulting's Kelly. "That's an amazing accomplishment." Amazing, and expensive. J&J/Merck and SmithKline are each spending some $100 million in marketing campaigns for their new acid blockers...
...Pepcid's quick strike, Tagamet's ambitious counterattack and the row over advertising may look like mere skirmishes when Zantac 75 enters the fray. This acid blocker is the over-the-counter version of Zantac, the top-selling prescription drug in the world and the pride of Britain's Glaxo-Wellcome pharmaceutical stable. Prescribed for 240 million patients around the globe, Zantac last year generated $3.6 billion in sales, $2.1 billion in the U.S. And last month the over-the-counter Zantac 75 received a recommendation from an FDA advisory committee, virtually assuring its imminent approval for sale...
...antacid products. In touting Tagamet HB, for example, SmithKline has to avoid invidious comparisons with Tums, its antacid moneymaker, while J&J/Merck must tiptoe around any comparisons between Pepcid AC and its antacid, the much advertised Mylanta. Meanwhile, Switzerland's Ciba-Geigy has other worries. Though it has no acid blocker available that could bite into sales of Maalox, its bread-and-butter antacid, its competitors' new drugs almost certainly will...
Though hurt by the onslaught of acid blockers, the lower-priced and faster-acting antacids will almost certainly maintain a respectable market share. Tums, for example, costs less than 3¢ a tablet. That compares with more than 40¢ for a one-a-day Pepcid AC tablet or a Tagamet HB two-tablet dose, although both products currently offer substantial rebates. Still, booming sales of the new acid blockers seem to show that heartburn sufferers are not troubled by sticker shock. At a Duane Reade drugstore in Manhattan, Darlene Jackson, 35, picked up a box of Tagamet HB and noted...