NO SUGARCOATING FOR INSULIN FAILURES

Abstract

IT’S HARD TO FATHOM how a company that sells $60 billion worth of pharmaceuticals per year could misjudge a target market as badly as Pfizer did when it launched Exubera, its inhaled insulin product. To be fair, Pfizer stands out largely for being the first to market inhaled insulin and the first to call it quits. Eli Lilly & Co. and Novo Nordisk spent a decade on R&D as well, but they pulled the plug on their products during late-stage clinical trials. Also involved were smaller technology partners that helped develop drug delivery devices. Only Valencia, Calif.-based MannKind retains any major commitment to inhaled insulin. Intuitively, inhaled insulin makes sense. The market is enormous—an estimated 230 million people worldwide have diabetes, and those being treated used $24 billion worth of antidiabetic drugs in 2007, according to the market analysis firm IMS Health. More than a third of those products are various forms of insulin, ...