I remember when Ulf talked about psych revenue and his pained expression at how poorly Brintellix was performing due to small US share and collapse of European market. Same thing every time Staffan went over psych sales numbers. Then he bailed despite being heir apparent. This company died the day it decided in Copenhagen that vorioxetine was going to bring by in 2 billion USD a year. Someone show me how we stay solvent once US neuro disappears.
Back in the summer of 2013, the idiots at EquatePharma, predicted that Brintellix would be a $2 billion drug. Anyone, anyone that had been in this market should have known that prediction was insane. With less than 1% market share in almost 5 years, it's run is over. AM has been out even longer, and hasn't exactly blown the doors off either. Then this brings us to our other me-too, Rexulti. When your strategy is to take from generics, you effectively have no strategy, or you are depending on patient profiles. It's pathetic that's all they have, but, it's all they have. The test has begun for survival. Sabril, Xenazine and soon Onfi are/will be generic. Then this time next year, Latuda will be generic. The loss of revenue will be huge. Staffan, the heir apparent as you said, saw the handwriting on the wall, and quit. Our new CEO may turn out to be another cold-hearted bastard like Kare. Just read the Teva CP thread to see what he is doing to Teva! We will go to Vegas, I'm sure get a new and magic patient profile, role play the same thing we did last meeting, and they will all clap themselves on the back for a job well done. Quotas will climb, bonuses will fall, micromanaging will get worse, frustrations will rise, PIP's will come out, and people will find other companies.
Basing your company on trying to take from generics is insane unless you can show great head to head trial data on a life changing/saving clinical outcome. Saying “well we might work on different receptors” and improve some nebulous symptoms others might not is wholly insufficient. Hubris. Execs in Denmark assumed they and their scientists were geniuses because they invented other anti-depressants in decades prior. It was sacrilege to even whisper that psychiatry might not be as lucrative as years past. They acted like they won the lottery prior to the launch of Brintellix. There’s a reason ALL the major players discontinued their non-orphan psych pipelines.
You're right, all major companies have pulled out of virtually anything that is related to depression, bi-polar or schiz. Lundbeck's refusal to look at any other disease state (except Alzheimer's) was/is a huge mistake. Now we are on a road that we are unable to get off. At the "LUNA" meeting in a few weeks, pay attention and you will see it's a carbon copy of every other national meeting. My guess is that they will proudly roll out yet another useless patient profile. They still operate under the mistake that psychs have no clue where to prescribe an MDD drug, and they seldom buy in on adjunctive therapy with an atypical. They are convinced that psychs are holding off Rx'ing Rex because they are not convinced it works. I haven't had a single psych that has ever made that comment to me! It's all about whether or not managed care will cover it. Look at Seroquel XR, with it's $3 co-pay, and it's on every formulary out there! How long can this "strategy" keep us going? Will the new CEO come in and tear things up like Kare is doing at Teva? How many of us will try and get one of the many Alkermes jobs that were just posted? Look around you at LUNA and see how many people we have lost over the last couple of years, and how many new faces you see. A psych only strategy will prove to be a huge mistake in these days and times.
And you need DEEP pockets to go after Alzheimer’s given the high failure rate of trials. Reality is psych and neuro just aren’t very similar in terms of the science and trials. Yes “they both involve the brain” just like heart burn and a massive heart attack “cause chest pain.” So this is a psych only company for the next 10 years. That’s not going to work no matter how many profiles you trot out.
This company is either going to fold or shrink to a rump of less than 1500 employees. Kare himself said that if Lundbeck can’t invent their own commercially success medications then perhaps they shouldn’t exist.
Well Lundbeck is not going to invent anything. So, old Kare the Asshole may prove to be right! We you have senior leadership wasting money on speaker programs, huge meetings, managers with 6 reps, no managed care, etc. etc., you know it won't last long. They never learn.
Celexa and Lexapro were in a different era. Lexapro, albeit an excellent medication is an isomer of Celexa. How would it stand up to scrutiny of today's managed care organizations? Would it be a blockbuster in 2018 or would it be a Clarinex/Xyzal?? And remember when we were told about the H2H study vs. Lexapro. Supposedly equal efficacy but superior advantage in sexual side effects. Where is that data in the vis aid?
