Fierce Biotech reported yesterday that J&J's partner, Medivir, on a late stage hep C therapy, called TMC435, is upset with J&J's promotion of Vertex Pharmaceutical's newly approved hep C therapy - Incivek. It seems J&J's sales force woudl be representing both products to the same use community of prescribing physicians. Medivir CEO Ron Long says he can't see how this won't result in conflicts of interest.
"They have to resolve that issue," Long said, "You can't use best eforts if you are prioritizing one drug over the other. I think their positon is unsustainable and I've told them so."
This seems freakishly similar to the back and forth we've been seeing between Lilly and Amylin over Lilly's plans to promote both Amylin's and Boehringer's diabetes treatments to the same user base. That one has resulted in Amylin's filing suit against Lilly. I wonder how common these type of issues are going to become with Big Pharma buying up molecules from biotech's -- apparently from the same therapeutic areas.
Posted by Bruce Lehr July 14th 2011.
Comments