Facing generic competition for its ?little blue pill,? Pfizer recently started selling a chewable form of Viagra in Mexico. It is called Viagra Jet, and Pfizer says it may also market it to other nations in the developing world, if not the United States.
Levitra, another erectile dysfunction drug, is now sold as a dissolvable tablet in nine European countries and may come to American pharmacies as soon as this month under the name Staxyn. That new form of the drug, which fizzes and dissolves in seconds, is marketed in a pocket-size, midnight-black box for men who prefer to take it discreetly, without water.
The third drug for erectile dysfunction to reach the market, Cialis, now eight years old, is racing ahead of the others because of two ideas that have proven extremely popular: an everyday pill and a 36-hour ?weekender.? Cialis is projected to become the top-selling of the three drugs in the world this year, passing Viagra.
The market for drugs to correct erectile dysfunction has passed $5 billion a year from sales to tens of millions of men. And it is increasingly being driven by novel applications to compete with the lower-priced generics on the horizon.
?Gimmick is a strong word, but all of this is designed to create new brand identities,? Joseph P Alukal, an assistant professor and director of reproductive health at the New York University School of Medicine, said. ?A newer product, less expensive, and a new form of taking it ? all that might convince more people to try it.?
Research is also under way in Brazil on a faster-acting form of the drugs, which increase blood flow by relaxing smooth muscle cells. While the existing pills enter the bloodstream indirectly by way of the stomach, intestines and liver, this form would enter more directly, dissolving in a capillary-rich space under the tongue and increasing the blood flow within 10 or 15 minutes. The research in Brazil involves generic Viagra, but Pfizer says it is not sponsoring the work.
The Mexican experiment with Viagra Jet will show whether the chewable form of the drug has promise in other countries, particularly developing markets, Susan O?Connor, Pfizer?s vice-president of global commercial development, said. Studies showed most Mexican men who used Viagra ground it up to make it easier to swallow or in the belief it would start acting faster.
In explaining why the drug is being test-marketed in Mexico, O?Connor cited ?patient preference, found in market research.? Mexico is the biggest market for Viagra in the developing world, with about $55 million in sales last year. At this point, Pfizer does not have plans to bring Viagra Jet to the United States, she said.
In America, Pfizer is battling to keep low-price generic competition off the shelves a year from now, when the drug?s patent expires. The generic pills would cost only a fraction of the $10 or more that each pill now costs. Bayer, meanwhile, has introduced the dissolvable form of its Levitra drug in Austria, France, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Poland, Sweden, Denmark and Britain, where it went on sale in late March.
The drug is called Levitra ODT, for orodispersible tablets. It comes in a thin black package the size of a half-dozen stacked credit cards, with four pills on a card that slides out.
?It?s pocket-friendly, discreet and gives the product a playful edge over its competitors,? Thomas Proske, global brand manager for Levitra at Bayer Healthcare, said in a statement. The same pill was approved in the United States last June under the brand name Staxyn. It will be available in pharmacies this month, according to Jess Macnaught, marketing executive with Burgopak Design and Packaging, the London company that designed the new black package.
GlaxoSmithKline and Merck have licensed American rights from Bayer, but they declined to reveal when the drug would be introduced. Last year, they said Staxyn would reach the market in late 2010.
Worldwide sales of erectile dysfunction drugs grew 6.9 percent in 2010, to about $5 billion, and 4.7 percent in 2009, according to the industry data firm IMS Health.