Diet pills a driving force for pharma

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">FRANKFURT: The year''s big drug-industry merger may turn out to be about using marketing muscle to fight fat. In April, when the French drug company Sanofi-Synthilabo vanquished all other players with a long-shot takeover bid for a much larger French-German rival, Aventis, many commentators focused on the role of politicians in Paris.<br /> <br />The French government, determined to create a national champion in pharmaceuticals, all but stage-managed the deal, which created the world''s third-largest drug company, after Pfizer of the United States and GlaxoSmithKline of Britain.<br /><br />But last week, with Sanofi''s release of promising results for a new drug that fights both obesity and smoking, it became clear that the $65 billion merger was about more than Gaullist bragging rights.<br /><br />The drug, which is known as Rimonabant and will be marketed as Acomplia, was in Sanofi''s pipeline long before the merger, and the company — now called Sanofi-Aventis — says that it could become one of the industry''s once-in-a-decade blockbusters. Many doctors and analysts agree. <br /><br />While doubters note that other promising obesity drugs have proved disappointing and that the company has not completed some crucial tests, Sanofi plans to file for regulatory approval early next year in the US and Europe. If regulators sign off, the company hopes to put the drug on the market in 2006. With obesity affecting 100 million people in the US and Europe, analysts say such a drug could generate up to $6 billion a year in sales by the end of the decade. <br /><br />That would put Acomplia on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, with the likes of Pfizer''s Lipitor and Merck''s Zocor cholesterol treatments.<br /><br />"We Europeans, whenever we came to America, we always noticed the enormous number of obese people on the streets," said Jean-Pierre Bassand, a cardiologist who chaired the meeting of the European Society of Cardiology in Munich last week, where the results were presented. <br />"But now obesity is spreading all over the world, like wildfire," Dr. Bassand said. <br /><br />"Fifteen percent of French adolescents are obese. This is potentially a major breakthrough in treating this condition."<br /><br />The data presented in Munich last week were based on interim results from a planned two-year study that is not yet complete. But the figures were striking - and in keeping with the outcome of an earlier trial in the US. <br /><br />More than 1,500 patients treated daily for one year with a 20-milligram dose of Acomplia lost an average of 8.6 kilograms and reduced their waistlines by an average of 8.5 centimeters. The drug also increased levels in the blood of HDL cholesterol — the so-called good cholesterol — by an average of 27 per cent.<br /><br />Doctors taking part in the trial say they are particularly excited by the drug''s shrinking effect on waistlines. "We know that the deep abdominal weight in your belly is the dangerous fat that leads to heart disease and diabetes," said Luc van Gaal, a professor of medicine at the Antwerp University Hospital in Belgium. <br /><br />What makes Acomplia even more tantalising is a clinical trial in the US indicating that the drug, taken in daily 20 milligram doses, can nearly double a patient''s odds of stopping smoking. Moreover, those who did quit gained little weight afterward — avoiding a common after-effect that has been a disincentive for smokers to give up cigarettes.<br /><br />"It gives us another bullet in the gun," said Robert M Anthenelli, an addiction psychiatrist at the University of Cincinnati and an investigator in the smoking trial. "It is totally unlike other medicines."<br /><br />But if Acomplia''s early promise eventually translates to a marketable drug, then selling it — especially in the huge American market — will demand a much larger sales force than Sanofi could have fielded before the takeover. <br /><br />Currently, for example, the company relies on Bristol-Myers Squibb to market two of Sanofi''s best-selling drugs in the US — the blood-thinner Plavix and the blood pressure pill Avapro. But the alliance has a steep price: Bristol-Myers reportedly pockets about half the drugs'' American profits.<br /><br />Through merger with Aventis, with its large stateside sales force, Sanofi will be able to market Acomplia by itself, retaining all its sales and profits. "We needed more muscle to sell such a product," Girard Le Fur, the company''s chief scientist said. <br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">NYT News Service</span></div> </div>