If you’re a pharma company that thrives on innovation (and, really, are there any which don’t?), and you’ve got to get product out; you have two things working against you: an economy which won’t begin to see its brightest days until year or so from now, and huge stakes on whatever decision lawmakers fashion out of the health reform debate. Although high powered lobbyists for the drug industry probably have your back, you’re still a little reticent about unleashing a new agent.

Then again, you could just throw caution to the wind and release a drug, make news at the same time, and pray for immediate profits to please shareholders so that they can keep the investments coming based upon a portfolio which aches to show any improvement over the previous quarter’s.

That’s the route Schering-Plough has taken by releasing Saphris (asenapine), a new agent in the treatment of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It’s joining an already crowded field of other drugs in its class to treat these disorders. Time will tell if it makes a difference in patients’ lives, but for its pharma company, it better be sooner — as its spin has already started.

“Basically these drugs have tended to fall into two baskets,” Robert Consalvo, director of global product communications and advocacy relations for Schering-Plough, says. One group is potent but has side effects such as weight gain or blood sugar issues, while others are better tolerated but not as effective, Consalvo explains. “We see asenapine combining the potency with that acceptable metabolic profile.”

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If that’s the case, then asenapine would make a contribution to the field, notes Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, the Lawrence E. Kolb Chairman of Psychiatry at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. “But the data that have emerged so far haven’t shown that,” he says. “The studies haven’t shown that it provides any unique therapeutic advantage. The main contribution is that clinicians and patients will have yet another choice.”

Choice. It’s what happens when innovation isn’t disrupted. How will it continue to be financed? | LINK

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