Furthermore, he noted that on Feb. 27 this year, “in a move to gain a foothold in the rapidly growing vitamin supplement market, Pfizer announced its acquisition of Alacer, the maker of Emergen-C, which is a leading brand of vitamin C supplement that sells over 500 million packets each year. The Emergen-C line of products is the largest selling product of its kind in the United States and is distributed through supermarkets, drug stores and health stores across the country. In my opinion, this acquisition will pay off for Pfizer, as more health-conscious consumers are beginning to look to the vitamin supplement market in view of preventive health concerns.”  

 

“The acquisition of Wyeth has made all the difference for Pfizer and has allowed it to surpass Novartis and remain ahead of Merck,” he also noted. “It also operates at a slightly higher margin of 29 percent compared to Novartis and Merck, which both operate at margins of 21 percent.”  

 

On the more clinical side of Pfizer’s current activities, March 12 saw an announcement that data from a Phase III study of Prevnar 13 (Pneumococcal 13-valent Conjugate Vaccine [Diphtheria CRM197 Protein]) met all study endpoints, showing immunogenicity and establishing a safety profile in children and adolescents aged 5 through 17 years. These data will support planned regulatory submissions seeking to expand the Prevnar 13 label in the United States, the European Union and various countries around the world, Pfizer says.  

 

“As a global leader in pneumococcal disease prevention, we are excited about the potential to further define the clinical utility of Prevnar 13 with the aim of seeking to broaden prevention efforts to additional age groups,” said Dr. Emilio Emini, chief scientific officer for the Vaccine Research division at Pfizer. “While pneumococcal disease most often strikes younger children, older children and adolescents who have certain medical conditions are also at heightened risk for contracting the disease.”  

 

Also on the clinical side, Pfizer reported very recently that it is ending a safety study of its pain drug Celebrex—Pfizer’s fifth-best-selling drug at $2.52 billion in sales last year—because of difficulty finding patients. The trial was designed to measure the effects of Celebrex on patients who were taking the drug to treat juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The drug was originally approved in 1998, and Pfizer was required to do this safety study in 2006 after Celebrex was approved as a treatment for juvenile idiopathic arthritis. According to Pfizer, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had recently released it from this requirement.  

 

Also in the whirlwind of Pfizer coverage on the news wires early this week was news that painkiller developers such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. were trying to revive a class of arthritis drugs that had been sidelined by safety concerns for nearly two years because the FDA had said there was a clear association between the nerve-blocking medications and incidences of joint failure.  

 

However, FDA has also noted that those side effects were less common when the drugs were used at lower doses, which left the door open for companies to revisit this class of drugs, which includes Pfizer’s experimental tanezumab and also fulranumab and REGN475, which were being explored by J&J and Regeneron.  

 

March 13 saw the announcement that Pfizer and its rivals had won the backing of an FDA advisory panel to continue development of this class of experimental painkillers. The 21 FDA advisers voted unanimously that the benefits of enhanced pain relief outweigh the risks of the so-called anti-nerve growth factor drugs—though this doesn’t guarantee that the FDA itself will ultimately agree (although that is usually the case).  

 

“There’s significant risk but there are probably patient populations where there will be significant benefit,” Lenore Buckley, professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine in Richmond and chairwoman of the panel, said during the meeting.