Pharmaceutical Executive-07-01-2003

Table of Contents

Thanks to managed care's efforts to steer patients into the least intensive treatment settings, primary care practitioners (PCPs) play an increasingly important role in prescribing.

How should drug companies and physicians interact? And if something is wrong with the relationship, who's to blame?

Paramus Road in New Jersey is a construction zone, filled with cars edging their way past lots slated for shopping plazas, food joints, and industrial office parks. Along that thoroughfare-near small pharma companies like Faulding and Synaptic and just a few miles away from Roche-lies Yama-nouchi Pharma America (YPA). Like the environment unfolding around it, YPA is in the process of becoming.

Looking back on 2003, biotech industry insiders and the analysts who cover them would agree that the opening line from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities aptly describes the current biotech market: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Pharma companies seem to have forgotten one key lesson: Blockbusters are made, not discovered. Few drugs achieve top sales based on their initial formulation and indications.

Partnerships between pharmaceutical (Rx) and diagnostic (Dx) companies are difficult to achieve because most managers don't understand what it takes to make them work.