Pfizer laboratories have just announced the withdrawal of their inhaled insulin, a drug that was launched promising the life of many diabetics.But exubera sales (its commercial name) have been much poorer than expected.

Updated Wednesday 11/11/2007 20:25

The exubera specimens that are already in the market will not be removed, but the product will cease to be supplied from now on.The decision to stop marketing a drug for economic reasons is almost no precedents, according to the Wall Street Journal.In a meeting to review the results of the last quarter, the company announced the end of the drug.

"This year's sales were very modest. Seven million dollars [five million euros] in the last quarter and 12 million [8,4] so far this year," said Frank d'Amelio, director ofPfizer finance.Although the company's initial calculations anticipated that exubera became a 'superventas' (that is, to sell more than 1,000 million dollars, 700 million euros) and despite the intense promotion, it only managed to 'bite'0.3% of the insulin market.

Inhaled insulin was launched in the US in 2006. Through an inhaler, the diabetic aspired a cloud of insulin dust, which reached the lungs and, from there, to the blood flow.In this way, it avoided a good part of the insulin injections that diabetic is managed daily.But these advantages were diminished by the doubts of some specialists about their long -term safety and the spectacular of the inhaler, similar to a tennis ball tube.Exubera did not succeed among diabetics.

"Despite the best efforts of our sales, marketing and manufacturing colleagues, the product simply did not get the acceptance of doctors and patients. So during the next three months we will support doctors to pass their patients to other drugs and leave theFuture investments in the development of second generation devices, "said Jeff Kindler, president of Pfizer.

Some diabetics complained that "the separation is very difficult to transport," recalls Salvador Casale, president of the Federation of Diabetics of the Community of Madrid.Casale has shown her surprise for the withdrawal of the product, because she had not had news of it."I had no idea. In Spain it has been very little time. Possible users were not yet informed," he laments.

1,500 Spanish users

Company sources in Spain have confirmed that, during the next quarter, they will help doctors to pass their patients to other insulin treatments.Some 1,500 Spaniards with diabetes consumed the drug since it went on sale, last June."Now we are contacting the main actors, both of scientific societies and patient groups, and on Monday we will begin to contact the entire medical class," said these sources, which have remembered that they will continue to invest in the treatments against the diseaseendocrine"We do not abandon the field of diabetes."

At the moment, the reaction of societies and patients has been neutrality or understanding, they say."Clearly, we underestimate the barrier that patients and doctors would pass out to exube"said Ian Read, president of Pfizer world pharmaceutical operations.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the withdrawal also shows how complex and expensive the commercialization of modern biotechnological drugs is for pharmaceutical companies.The exubera story goes back a decade ago,When Pfizer signed an agreement with a small biotechnological company that was studying inhaled insulin.

The idea was that diabetics did not like to prick needles several times a day to manage the insulin they need to control their blood sugar levels.But in these years the administration of the hormone has improved a lot and, thanks to the dosing pencils, its administration is no longer as uncomfortable and painful as it is once."The injections are very achieved lately," Casale explains.

Exubera was the first and unique insulin inhaled in the market, although other pharmaceutical companies are working on products of this type.

As Pfizer announced yesterday, the drug will cost him 2.8 billion dollars, both for the costs of withdrawal and for the rights of medication and other concepts."This decision reflects our strict adherence to three fundamental principles: we will be realistic, we will listen to our consumers and be very disciplined in how we evaluate both internal and external investments," Kindler said.