Proton-pump inhibitors burn onto OTC shelves

This holiday season, heart-burn sufferers very well may be reaching inside their stockings for a box of Prevacid 24HR, especially some five weeks into Novartis’ reported $200 million media blitz behind the latest proton-pump inhibitor to reach over-the-counter shelves.

But it should be a very merry Christmas for all brands of heartburn relief. While Novartis will be touting the benefits of its PPI with the tagline “Prevacid 24HR: When you’ve had it with heartburn,” other marketers in the space are expected to defend their share with increased media buys—and in the case of GlaxoSmithKline, even position their brand as a PPI-companion purchase. “Tums is the ideal adjunctive therapy for PPI users, 46% of whom suffer from occasional breakthrough heartburn,” said Darren Singer, VP marketing of OTC wellness at GSK.

And a third PPI may not be too far behind the launch of Prevacid 24HR. The Food and Drug Administration is expected to decide on the switch of OTC Zegerid, licensed by Schering-Plough, this month. If approved, SP could launch OTC Zegerid as early as first quarter 2010.

But how many PPI mega-brands can the OTC digestives category handle? Sales of Prilosec OTC have dropped 16.6% for the 52 weeks ended Oct. 4, on account of generic competition, but it still generates $285.7 million across food, drug and mass (minus Walmart), according to Information Resources Inc.

Novartis plans to generate at least as much with its Prevacid 24HR. “We have a chance to really make Prevacid 24HR [one of the] top five OTC brands in the United States,” Daniel Vasella, Novartis chairman and CEO, told analysts in October. “The Prevacid business will come from [existing] Rx users, and not by cannibalizing existing antacids,” said Laura Mahecha, healthcare industry manager for market research firm Kline.

OTC Zegerid may bring in as much as $100 million in OTC sales in its first year on the market, Mahecha said, and reach $200 million in sales in the three years after its launch. Projections for Zegerid are somewhat of a moving target right now, Mahecha added, because it’s not as well-known among consumers as either Prevacid or Prilosec, and it’s not known whether the FDA will allow SP to make the prescription claim that Zegerid is the “first and only immediate-release formulation,” if the agency does approve Zegerid as an OTC.