Category: Pharmaceuticals

I try not to bore you by writing about details from my workplace. There are plenty other subjects I can write about to bore you. That said, the Top Companies issue is all wrapped up, dear readers! I can get some rest! Or get back to writing these posts (Montaigne: here I come!) and bits and pieces of That Thing I’m Working On.

The really exhausting aspect of this annual issue is that I can’t really do anything else. I get up in the morning, have coffee and breakfast, read some papers, then get to work reading annual reports and analysts’ coverage, writing profiles, and revising pipeline spreadsheets as new clinical or regulatory announcements come out. It goes through the workday and into the evening, giving me palpitations when I look at the lists of “Profiles Written” and “Profiles To Write.”

As such, I can’t really get out and go anywhere in the evenings. In fact, it got so bad at one point that I ran out of my good coffee and had no opportunity to get out to Chef Central for a new supply.

It got so bad that I bought Starbucks beans at the local supermarket.

Somehow, Starbucks has become an international ubiquity. I have no idea how, because it seems to have the mission of “educating” people about high-end coffee, but serves up drinks brewed from beans that have been scorched and industrially demolished. It’s either a cruel joke or an attempt at making their standard coffee so unpalatable that consumers have no choice but to order those high-margin sugared-up confections. Or maybe it’s meant to parallel the middle stage of Evey’s education from V for Vendetta, but that would imply there’s some sorta payoff where we get to blow up the PM’s house or something.

Regardless, the downshot is that for several days I was stuck with a bag of Starbucks coffee for my mornings. Finally, last Saturday, my wife and I went on a short shopping trip, so I could hit Chef Central and restock. They were out of my #1 choice (Kenya AA). This happened once before, driving me to mention to the cashier, “I’m ready to kill everyone in this building.” Fortunately, he mentioned that the Jamaican Joe’s is a good second choice, so that’s become my #1A. I picked up two bags of it this time and headed home.

I’m still working though this morning’s mug, so my descriptive powers aren’t up to relating the euphoric rush I got from wafting the scent of those beans when I opened the first bag. If you come visit, I promise I’ll share some with you.

As I poured the bag into a coffee can, I marveled over the contrast with the Starbucks bag. Where the latter was shriveled, blackened, and cracked / chipped / filled with fragments and specks, the contents of the Jamaican Joe’s bags were whole, full-bodied, and, yeah, glistened a little with their oil. But not in a gay way.

Then I thought, “Why write about this stuff when I can just take some pictures?”

So here’s a little side-by-side slideshow of the good beans vs. the bad beans. Enjoy. I’m getting back to my mug. As the incomparable Dave Foley put it on an early episode of News Radio, “I don’t know what it is caffeine does for you, but I’m pretty sure that without it, your head caves in.”

. . . words, that is. There’s only one profile remaining for me to write for the Top Companies issue: Pfizer!

(I save the biggest for last; that’s just the sorta guy that I am.)

From another of my pharma profiles:

In the past year, Takeda made a splash in the U.S. with its surreal commercials for sleep treatment Rozerem. Featuring such elements as Abraham Lincoln and a talking beaver, the spots are supposed to evoke the incredibly embarrassing dream-symbols that insomniacs miss out on. Lucky them.

The following was deleted from one of my pharma company profiles: “Dapoxetine was rejected by the FDA in 2005, but if its EU filing gets approval this year, another FDA submission could be coming soon.”

The best part is that the company is Johnson & Johnson.

I enjoy writing the big Top 20 Pharma / Top 10 Biopharma report each June. Sure, it’s not what I imagined I’d be doing when I was a brooding, pretentious idiot in college, but it turns out that there’s plenty of fun to be had in researching and writing these profiles.

For one thing, there’s the mystery/police procedural aspect of reading through annual reports and SEC statements and trying to figure out just what certain companies are trying to hide. Maybe it’s awful revenues from a new product (now conveniently reclassified into a group of products, so its figures aren’t broken out), or a diminished product pipeline (“I wonder why [company x] isn’t mentioning any of its late-stage projects”), or a quiet reorganization (last year, a company detailed its layoffs and plant closures, but made no statement anywhere about how much money it hoped to save in the process). It can take some detective work to figure this stuff out; I’m sure if I’d gotten myself an MBA, I could parse it more easily.

And for another thing, there’s the drugs.

I always enjoy reading through these companies’ reports to see about all the neat new therapies, the increased survival rates they bestow, the alleviation of previously uncureable conditions, the lifestyle changes we never thought possible. This, too can take some detective work, because some companies don’t seem to know what they have.

Por ejemplar: Today, I added UCB Group to my Top Biopharmas ranking. The company doesn’t have any biologic-based drugs on the market, but it’s got some in the pipeline, which is better than some of the other companies that I’ve included for years.

As part of its profile, I needed to list UCB’s best-selling drugs and how they performed last year. And that was how I discovered Nootropil, which posted around $125 million in 2006 sales.

“Nootropil?” thought I. “I wonder what that’s for . . . ?” Since I got a masters degree in liberal arts rather than business, I knew that the ‘noo-‘ root means ‘mind’ in Greek, and that left me intrigued.

According to UCB’s annual report, Nootropil’s a “cognitive enhancer.” Well, that begged more questions than it answered! Fortunately, the Internet has plenty of answers! It’s my cognitive enhancer!

Nootropil is known generically as piracetam and, according to this wiki page, it’s “a cerebral function regulating drug which, it is claimed, is able to enhance cognition and memory, slow down brain aging, increase blood flow and oxygen to the brain, aid stroke recovery, and improve Alzheimer’s, Down’s Syndrome, dementia, and dyslexia, among others.” Oh, and it has virtually no side effects.

Now if only I can convince them to send me some samples!

Every summer, when we get rolling on the annual Top 20 Pharma / Top 10 Biopharma report, my trusty associate editor compiles pipeline information for the past year. While I suss out sales figures and try to parse the arcana of accounting, she puts together lists of new drugs that were approved, extensions or new indications for approved drugs, those that are filed and pending approval, those that have lost patent protection, research projects in late-phase or early-phase studies, and those that were canceled or rejected.

That last category, the could-have-beens, is a testament to the enormous risk that drug companies take on. This year’s #1 company, Pfizer, recently had to cancel development of a drug that would have brought in upwards of $50 billion in revenues during its lifecycle. Future revenues are kaput and $1 billion in R&D investment has been flushed away with it.

Fortunately, Michael Moore has a strategy for eliminating this expense and the risk! America needs to regulate drug companies “like utilities since they’re just as important as electricity and water.” That’ll make them more productive and less expensive! Of course!

I mean, outside of the fact that the U.S. power grid is antiquated and prone to collapse, and that the water supply in this house was provided by a well for 35 years, I’d have to say he almost knows what he’s talking about.

I do find it funny when people tell me the pharma industry needs more regulation, and that drugs should be cheaper.