The Times UK
August 14, 2013
Patients with HIV who take Atripla, the most commonly prescribed once-a-day pill to control the virus, often complain of a peculiar side-effect: vivid, lucid, technicolour dreams. Believe it or not, these aren't much fun.
GLAXOSMITHKLINE has come up with an alternative — a tablet called Tivicay — that has fewer side-effects and is slightly more effective at keeping the virus under control.
Approved by US Food and Drug Administration yesterday, this is a big win for GSK's HIV business ViiV, a joint venture with Pfizer and Shionogi. The pill could command sales of £1 billion a year by 2020. That, in turn, could end a long decline for GSK's Aids franchise, which generated £2.3 billion of sales a decade ago but shrivelled to £1.4 billion last year.
It seems extraordinary that we're even talking about once-a-day pills. Enormous strides have been made in tackling HIV over the past two decades. Sir Andrew Witty, GSK's chief executive, recalls that as recently as 1990 it was difficult to complete studies of new Aids drugs because the patients didn't survive to the end of clinical trials.
It would be foolish, of course, to portray HIV as a battle won: 1.7 million people died of Aids-related illnesses in 2011 and an estimated 34 million people are HIV positive. Sir Andrew knows this better than most. He was once GSK's country head in South Africa, where the company was hammered in the early 1990s for refusing to drop its prices for impoverished Aids victims. That lesson has since been learnt.
If this new pill delivers as much as it promises, there's a good chance that GSK will try to realise value by floating ViiV. The world leader in Aids drugs, the California-based Gilead, will be looking over its shoulder nervously.