This week we acquired a great lecture for UCI OpenCourseWare in our growing Public Health collection, Public-Private Partnerships for Health: Social experiments to integrate ethics and profits, by Dr. Sherri Treasurywala of the Paul Merage School of Business. In the lecture, Dr. Treasurywala explains the big pharmaceutical drug business model and how the pursuit of “blockbuster” drugs does not advance healing amongst some of the poorest citizens and how some are seeking to correct this by building public-private partnerships in the developing world. This talk is particularly timely given this new piece featured in CNN Money/Fortune discussing Allergan’s success with its blockbuster drug, Botox. As reported by Shelley DuBois:
“The company behind Botox, the “face-lift in a bottle,” is itself aging rather gracefully. Net sales increased by 13.3%, to roughly $1.3 billion, in the first quarter of 2011 compared with the same period last year, and the company has given analysts no reason to think it won’t put together a string of good quarters.
That’s because Allergan’s product portfolio is looking first class: “We believe Allergan has one of the most compelling growth profiles in specialty pharma,” a May report by Piper Jaffray analysts David Amsellem and Michael Dinerman said. But pharma companies need more than a good growth strategy, says Ken Cacciatore, an analyst with Cowen Group. They should also develop new products and have plans to keep the patent rights for the ones that they already have. “That’s really the holy grail of pharmaceuticals,” he says, “and Allergan has it.””
Speciality pharma and niche marketing don’t cure malaria, but Treasurywala does address how some companies are working around the model that made them monetarily successful to provide relief to needy consumers. Dr. Treasurywala also discusses the Botox example in her talk in explaining how one drug, originally approved by the FDA to treat uncontrolled eye blinking and facial muscle spasms, can have multiple uses and be marketed successfully for those additional uses.