GSK another to cut back in France

UK-headquartered drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is to follow other sector majors - France\'s Sanofi-Aventis, the USA\'s Pfizer and Belgium\'s UCB - in cutting costs in France (Marketletters passim). GSK\'s medical visiting staff numbers will be reduced by 200 (15% of the total) over the next two years. Other changes will follow to adapt to a situation in the marketplace, which is subtly different from two to three years earlier. The government and other public bodies have called for a reduction of the pressure exercised on the medical profession by pharmacetuical companies with the aim of containing spending on prescriptions.

Meanwhile, new drugs have been and will be launched which, more and more, are intended for use by medical specialists both inside and outside hospitals. A product such as GSK\'s Tyverb (lapatinib; trade named Tykerb in the USA), which gained a positive opinion from the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) at the end of last year for the treatment of advanced or metastatic HER2+ breast cancer (Marketletter January 7), will be reserved for hospital use, and therefore require expert promotion by highly-trained medical representatives. This means fewer reps are now required to promote primary-care-use drugs to general practitioners. A GSK spokeswoman told the Marketletter that final European approval of Tyverb is expected by the end of this month, and the product will be rolled out as soon as possible thereafter.