After 2014, Lundbeck plans for growth in both revenue and profit driven by potential product launches from the existing late-stage pipeline such as Lu AA21004, clobazam, escitalopram in Japan, as well as products not included in the floor guidance, such as desmoteplase, Lu AA24530, nalmefene, zicronapine and others.

Lundbeck, Facing Lexapro Generics, Turns to Anti-Alcoholism Drug

H. Lundbeck A/S, whose best-selling antidepressant Lexapro loses patent protection in the U.S. this year, is in talks with potential marketing partners for an experimental alcoholism drug that wouldn't require patients to first give up drinking, Chief Executive Officer Ulf Wiinberg said.

The loss of the patent opens up Lundbeck, the Danish developer of drugs for depression and neurological illnesses, to generics competition.

The company has received has “many inquiries” into the anti-alcoholism product, called nalmefene, Wiinberg said. The Valby-based company aims to sell the medicine in Europe to general practitioners, and its sales force now primarily deals with specialists in central nervous system diseases.

“We're not going to hire 2,000 people,” Wiinberg said yesterday by phone.

Lundbeck has research under way in the last phase of testing usually required to seek regulatory approval. The company said it expects to apply for marketing permission in the second half of next year.

Patients who want to reduce their alcohol consumption would take the pill before they expect to begin drinking. The approach contradicts decades of treatment that requires alcoholics to abstain completely. Lundbeck will have to change both health- care providers' and consumers' behavior, Wiinberg said.

“We will put significant resources into this,” he said.

I wonder if he realizes how many drunks are counting on him.