Word: blockers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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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...
...surface: "The idea behind it led to the Nobel Prize in Medicine," reads the first, followed by, "It's the most prescribed medication of its kind." As the sun is gradually eclipsed, the boasts continue: "It helps block production of stomach acid." "It's the world's first acid blocker." Then, against the glowing corona of a totally eclipsed sun, "And now it's available without a prescription." Finally the eclipsed image resolves into the illustration on a drug package labeled Tagamet HB, under which is inscribed, "Now for heartburn...
Introduced in the U.S. by SmithKline Beecham in 1977 and under patent protection for 17 years, Tagamet was the pioneer acid blocker. Worldwide it has earned the company a total of $14 billion and was the first drug ever to chalk up $1 billion in sales in a single year. But in the late 1980s, anticipating the worst when its Tagamet patent ran out in 1994, SmithKline began conducting clinical trials and seeking FDA approval of an over-the-counter version. The wisdom of that decision became evident when Tagamet sales plummeted from $600 million in 1993 to only...
...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...
...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...