Pharmaceutical giants Merck and Bristol Meyers Squibb have seen significant declines in revenues from their leading cholesterol drugs (statin drugs) Zocor™ and Pravachol™, respectively. Partly due to patent expirations and the availability of generic drugs, this decline has prompted pharmaceutical companies to seek new, patentable drugs.

The pharmaceutical industry continues to search for the new drugs, or new chemical entities (NCEs) to treat for high cholesterol or dyslipidemia. However, trouble with toxicity and difficulty in showing efficacy overall has lead to a number of cardiovascular drug development projects being canceled. For example, the development of torcetrapib, Pfizer’s plasma cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CEPT) inhibitor, was discontinued after the agent was shown to be toxic.

As the cardiovascular drug industry become more competitive and whereas some recent attempts at new drug registrations have been met negatively by the FDA (i.e., Vytorin™), many of the largest companies are scrambling to enter into the realm of other treatment areas such as cancer drugs.

Traditionally, larger pharmaceutical companies have stayed out of the cancer treatment sector of medicine where biotech companies have dominated. As such, companies such as ImClone (IMCL) have who have been developing cancer treatments are now the object of much affection to the larger pharmaceutical companies who seem to think they will benefit more from acquiring an established pipeline of treatments rather to start from scratch.

For example, Eli Lilly (LLY) is the second pharmaceutical giant to attempt to obtain rights to ImClone’s (IMCL) developmental cancer drugs within the last quarter. It was announced that Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) tried to acquire the rights to five of Imclone’s development drugs only a few weeks ago. Also, Pfizer (PFE) announced last month that it was exiting the heart-drug market to focus on cancer treatments.

With the larger pharmaceutical companies exiting the cardiovascular drug market, it may create new opportunities for smaller, more agile companies including those who offer natural products.

When it comes to natural heart healthy products, Omega-3s are top of the list. In fact, the American Heart Association states on their website,

“Evidence from prospective secondary prevention studies suggests that taking EPA+DHA ranging from 0.5 to 1.8 grams per day (either as fatty fish or supplements) significantly reduces deaths from heart disease and all causes…Randomized clinical trials have shown that omega-3 fatty acid supplements can reduce cardiovascular events (death, non-fatal heart attacks, non-fatal strokes). They can also slow the progression of atherosclerosis in coronary patients.”

Unfortunately, the majority of Omega-3 supplements sold over the counter contain far below the therapeutic amount of Omega-3s indicated in the data. This means that these products provide a lot of non-Omega-3 fat and minimal essential fatty acids. That means that the customer wastes his or her money and has a false sense of health benefit.

PanGenex’s Omega-3 products were co-formulated with some of the country’s most prominent cardiologists and contains greater than 86% concentrated Omega-3s. All of PanGenex’s fish oil supplements deliver greater than 1000 mg of pure, molecularly distilled Omega-3s per serving. For more information, please visit www.HeartHealthyWorld.com.

Sources:

1. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2008/tc2008102_149704.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_technology
2. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122329145082307287.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
3. http://www.genengnews.com/articles/chitem.aspx?aid=2618
4. http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4632