Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14619

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Winslow R.
Amgen Eyes Internet and Modest Sales Force to Launch Denosumab
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2008 Nov 7
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/11/07/amgen-eyes-internet-and-modest-sales-force-to-launch-denosumab/

Full text:

How many Amgen sales reps does it take to sell a potential new blockbuster to primary care doctors?

The easy answer is, a lot more than it takes to screw in a light bulb. But the biotech company is pondering the more serious question of how to launch its bone-strengthening drug denosumab late next year, if FDA approves it as is expected.

Amgen is betting it can reach the right doctors with the nowhere near as many reps as primary care powerhouses like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and Merck have tapped to do that job in the past. The company leaning toward going it alone in the U.S. but may look for a partner in Europe, where the marketing the drug may require a sales force of up to 1,500.

The Health Blog dropped in on Amgen’s meeting with investors in Manhattan’s Times Square this morning and picked up a little intelligence on how the company thinks it can build a blockbuster in the post-blockbuster era.

D-mab is aimed first at the $7 billion market for post-menopausal osteoporosis – a condition that in the U.S. is largely treated by primary care docs, who already have several medicines to pick from, including generics. Amgen execs put up graphs of market research showing that 25% of docs – about 100,000 total in the U.S. write 85% of scripts for the ailment. It figures about 500 to 1,000 sales reps should cover the market.

Amgen wants to avoid “the carpet-bombing approach,” George Morrow, the company’s EVP for global commercial operations said. “That’s an outdated model.”

Other details were thin – Amgen isn’t interested in drawing the FDA’s ire or tipping off rivals by disclosing a specific marketing plan before it even delivers its application for approval. Still, Morrow did offer another hint of what’s ahead: the Internet. A big reason Barack Obama won the presidential election, he said, was his “exquisite use of the Internet.” Amgen plans sophisticated use of the Web to help drive sales of D-mab.