Viagra patent expiry in July 2014 arouses interest from Chinese pharmas to target US$81.4 billion market
July 26, 2013 Leave a comment
Viagra patent expiry arouses interest from Chinese pharmas
Staff Reporter
2013-07-26
Pfizer’s Viagra patent will expire in July 2014 and Chinese corporations such as Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings and Lianhuan Pharmaceutical are getting ready to flood the market with generic versions of the erectile dysfunction drug. In fact, the expiry of Viagra’s patent is just one instance from the over 600 patented drugs whose patents started expiring after 2012, according to the Chinese Medical Report.For the Chinese market, where 90% of the drugs are generics, the cheaper version of an erectile dysfunction drug will target a 500-billion-yuan (US$81.4 billion) market.
In 2012, patents of Merck Sharp & Dohme’s Montelukast Sodium Chewable Tablets, Novartis AG’s Valsartan and Abbott’s TriCor all lapsed. There are at least 15 other drugs, commanding a US$29 billion market, that will no longer be protected by patents in 2013.
Data revealed that erectile dysfunction drugs has a market potential of 20 billion yuan (US$3.3 billion), and Viagra accounted for about 5% of the total. Viagra sales have exceeded 2 billion yuan (US$326 million) globally.
Responding to the end of Viagra’s patent, Pfizer China stated that it will not take any specific action to protect its Viagra market from being cannibalized by cheaper versions.
In November 2011, the patent for Pfizer’s Lipitor expired. The drug had once generated company sales of over US$10 billion annually. Revenue generated by the drug plummeted after the expiration and hurt Pfizer’s quarterly financial reports for 2012.
Lipitor’s sales in the United States slid by 80% during the second quarter of last year.
Now several Chinese drug makers are gearing up to release generic versions of Viagra. Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Holdings already obtained a license to produce the drug in 2005. The company is expected to be the first domestic company to sell Viagra generics. Pfizer is expected to be impacted considerably, if foreign drug makers also join in producing cheaper versions of Viagra.
A researcher pointed out that the expiration of patents has handed generic drug makers an enormous business opportunity. Research and development for an original drug usually takes 10 to 15 years and cost up to billions of US dollars.
In comparison, the production of generics is a lot simpler and costs much less. The Chinese generics drug market is estimated to be worth nearly 500 billion yuan (US$81.4 billion) by 2015.
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