Daiichi Sankyo: Europe poses huge challenge for pharma
pharmafile | June 9, 2011 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Cancer, Daiichi Sankyo, pricing
Japanese pharma company Daiichi Sankyo is expanding its European operations, creating a new oncology business unit.
But outlining its plans the company’s European chief executive Reinhard Bauer said the European pharma market posed ‘enormous challenges’ to all pharma companies and that price restrictions would continue to hurt sales.
“We support benefit evaluations because we believe in the quality of our medications, but when unreasonable conclusions are drawn from the results and an arbitrary price is set for good medications, this flies in the face of all rules governing a fair market,” Bauer said.
He also criticised the significant delays that occur in reimbursement for new medications in some countries.
“Sometimes, we can launch important medications that have a real additional benefit for patients only with great delays,” he said.
Pricing restrictions across the EU are only set to get worse and Daiichi Europe will need to engage more with governments in order to secure the best deals for its medicines.
These could soon include its key lung cancer drug tivantinib, which has just moved into late-stage testing as part of Daiichi Sankyo’s plans to create a “world-class oncology pipeline by 2015”.
“We now have a well-stocked pipeline of new innovative medication candidates in oncology,” Bauer said. “We believe that these drugs will be significantly better for patients than current treatments.”
Daiichi’s oncology research work in Europe would contribute greatly to this work, he added.
Daiichi Sankyo’s cancer candidates
Tivantinib, a selective c-MET inhibitor used to treat advanced, non-squamous, non-small cell lung cancer, has just started enrolling patients for a phase III trial after promising mid-stage results.
In addition to tivantinib, Daiichi Sankyo is developing another lung-cancer drug, U3-1287, that is currently in phase II trials.
The company is also examining other agents in earlier stage trials, and said it is working closely with numerous European cancer centres and oncologists.
Cardiovascular focus
But the company said it would continue to focus on its core cardiovascular franchise and is particularly excited about its new anticoagulant edoxaban.
Edoxaban is part of the new class of oral factor Xa inhibitors looking to replace the 65-year old warfarin treatment.
There have already been several EU approvals for this new class of medicines including Pfizer and BMS’ Eliquis (apixaban) for the prevention of venous thromboembolic events (VTE).
Edoxaban is looking to file in the EU later this year and is currently being investigated in two global phase III trials.
Bauer said he sees huge potential for the factor Xa inhibitor class of drugs, which are set to steal a large portion of anticoagulant market by 2015.
Ben Adams
Related Content
AAX Biotech and Daiichi Sankyo partner to evaluate antibody therapeutics
AAX Biotech, a Swedish biotechnology company specialising in next-generation antibody therapeutics, has launched a strategic …
Central nervous system cancer metastases – the evolution of diagnostics and treatment
The current forms of immunotherapy, how T cell therapy works and what the future holds
BioMed X and Servier launch Europe’s first XSeed Labs to advance AI-powered antibody design
BioMed X and Servier have announced the launch of Europe’s first XSeed Labs research project, …
