Zambon exits inhaler pact
Zambon to pull out of a research project aimed at developing new
inhaler formulations of the steroid budesonide and bronchodilator
formoterol.
Zambon said it had decided to terminate the project, partnered with Danish company Direct-Haler, because the asthma market had moved on to embrace combination therapy, reducing the commercial potential of single-agent products.
For many years, asthmatics relied on using different colour-coded inhalers to manage their condition. Patients with mild disease would tackle their symptoms on-demand using a beta agonist, but as symptoms worsened steroids would be delivered separately to tackle the underlying inflammation in asthma.
In the last few years, companies with asthma franchises have developed combination products, incorporating a long-acting beta agonist and steroid drug into the same inhaler, to help patients comply with their treatment and hopefully improve control of their symptoms.
Leading the way was GlaxoSmithKline, whose Seretide (salmeterol and fluticasone propionate) takes the lion's share of the combination asthma drug market with sales of £2.2 billion last year. Meanwhile, AstraZeneca is gaining ground with its Symbicort (budesonide/formoterol) product, which saw its sales rise 61 per cent last year to $549 million (€450m).
The overall market for combination asthma drugs is around $5 billion a year, forecast to exceed $6 billion in 2006.
Both GSK and AstraZeneca have compiled data showing that delivering asthma treatments in tandem can improve asthma rates (by reducing the rate of breakthrough attacks) and reduce the need for 'rescue' medication, a clear sign of improved day-to-day asthma control.
And last year, two other players in the asthma market, Novartis and Schering-Plough, joined forces to develop a dual inhaler product based on the latter's steroid drug triamcinolone and the former's beta agonist formoterol.
Zambon has baulked at the timing and substantial investment to bring the Direct-Haler products to market, and has returned the worldwide respiratory rights to the device technology to the Danish firm, along with all documents and data so far produced.
Direct-Haler's managing director, Troels Keldmann, said the company was now "identifying the way forward for the two products in development, as well as for our second-generation respiratory combination therapy, for treatment of co-existing asthma and allergic rhinitis."
