Therapeutic benefits of Wyeth to Pfizer

Ritupon Gogoi, B. Pharm, MBA

Key diseases

Marketed products

Pipeline Benefits Risks

Alzheimer’s Strong pipelineMarket

DominanceAnti-competitive

market dominance

Inflammation

Enbrel TRU-015 Small molecule + biological therapy

Oncology Torisel Niche indications

Bulking-up portfolio

DiabetesWeak pipeline

Pain

Schizophrenia

None

None

None

Infectious diseasesPrevnar Prevnar 13;

meningitisNew area; steady

revenuesBiologics

culture at risk

Women’s HealthPremarin; Prempro

Aprela Market dominance in HRT; entry to

osteoporosis

Market dominance in

HRT

Source: DatamonitorStrongly positive Positive None NegativeSy

nerg

ies

Vac

cine

sCORE

P&P- Pfizer & Problems

Since Pfizer’s acquisition of Warner-Lambert in 2000 and Pharmacia in 2003, Pfizer has found it increasingly difficult to develop new drug candidate in-house.

Management focused on the integration of companies acquired rather than on the development of new drug.

Led to the dearth of late-stage pipeline candidates to replace Lipitor.

Pfizer’s pipeline also had to deal with the major blow of the failure of Torcetrapid in late 2006 because of side-effect concerns.

Benefits of Wyeth to Pfizer

Wyeth will bring to Pfizer a number of marketed products and pipeline candidates but is unlikely to address the fundamental loss of loss of R&D productivity.

Pfizer has identified six high-potential disease areas that would provide the company’s future growth: oncology, pain, inflammation, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia.

The acquisition of Wyeth strengthens Pfizer’s position in a number of these key disease areas, notably Alzheimer’s disease and inflammation.

The long term prospects of the oncology portfolio are also strengthened.

Benefits of Wyeth to PfizerAlzheimer’s growing market

The merger will have little effect on the other key disease areas of pain, psychiatry (schizophrenia) and diabetes.

Pfizer has the most to gain in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease market growth will reach $10 billion in

seven major markets (US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK) in 2017*.

The potential disease-slowing therapies bapineuzumabs (Elan/Wyeth) and Dimebon (Medivation/Pfizer) are expected to be the main drivers of growth in the Alzheimer’s market over the next five years.

The Pfizer-Wyeth combination would dominate the Alzheimer’s pipeline with a total of 15 candidates in development, but as many of these projects are novel, there is high risk of clinical trial failure.

*Source: Datamonitor

Cont…

Benefits of Wyeth to PfizerOpportunities in inflammation and vaccines

The merger offers the opportunities to bring Pfizer’s Celebrex (celecoxib) and Wyeth/Amgen’s Enbrel (etanercept) into the same portfolio for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Celebrex has patent protection in the US until 2014 and Enbrel is due to lose US patent protection in 2011.

Enbrel may not face generic competition for some time after 2011 as the drug is a fusion protein and its approval was completed through a biologic license application (BLA) in US.

The regulatory pathway for biosimilars has yet to be approved in the US.

Cont…

Benefits of Wyeth to PfizerOpportunities in inflammation and vaccines

The merger Pfizer-Wyeth pipelines also offer a dual biologic and smaller molecule approach to the next generation of rheumatoid arthritis therapies.

Wyeth is developing the fusion-protein TRU-015 in collaboration with Trubion Pharmaceuticals.

While Pfizer has focused on small molecule with the first-in-class Janus kinase – 3(JAK-3) inhibitor CP-690550.

Two other areas where Wyeth will significantly add to Pfizer’s portfolio are in infectious disease vaccines and in antibiotics.

Cont…

Benefits of Wyeth to PfizerOpportunities in inflammation and vaccines

Pfizer will now become one of the leading vaccine manufacturers through accessing Wyeth’s vaccines portfolio.

Long neglected by drug companies as low-margins therapies, the vaccines market was transformed by the launch of Wyeth’s pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar in 2000.

Wyeth has focused heavily on Prevnar and Prevnar-13, to the detriment of its development pipeline, resulting in only its Phase II meningitis B vaccine (MnBrLP2086) showing significant market potential.

Both Pfizer and Wyeth have a strong presence in hospital antibiotics with revenues of $2.5billion in the seven major markets in 2007 from Zyvox (Pfizer’s linezolid), Tygacil (Wyeth tigecycline) and Zosyn.

Cont…

Pfizer-Wyeth: Conclusion

To counter the commercial threat posed by Lipitor’s looming patent expiry, Pfizer has once again ceded to the lure of increased scale via M&A activity, in many ways this has become the only means by which Pfizer can appease investors following its expansion over the past decade, driven by previous mergers with Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia.

The acquisition of Wyeth could well be the first in a number of new purchases as Pfizer remains weak in diabetes and schizophrenia and still lacks critical mass in oncology.