Subject: Joe Papa comments on VYZULTA in Q&A at Cantor conference
Louise Chen
You recently launched Vyzulta, how has that launch progressed relative to expectations. How should we think about peak sales potential of that drug?
Joe Papa
Sure, we’re very pleased with what we've seen with Vyzulta relative to the physician response and the patient response and the refills we’re seeing that's all been good. One of the challenges that we knew going in is that approximately 60% of the glaucoma market is driven by our Part D. So we - at that time that we launched it, we had great commercial coverage. We had about 70%, 75% commercial coverage as I mentioned in the quarter two. However, we did not have Part D coverage that is an important part.
I'm delighted to say as I sit here today that we did enroll and get an agreement in a large Part D provider for 2019 that we can say that we will be on their formulary in 2019 a large plan, so that's good news or better news that I’m glad to say is that they’ve also agreed to not just wait till January 2019, they’re going to start some of the activities on the Part D formulary in 2018, that we think is a big opportunity for us to accelerate the Vyzulta performance because once I said 60% ballpark of the market is sitting in Part D, now that we’ve got a large plan where we will be on formulary and able to accelerate that into 2018 the remaining part of the year, we think that’s good news for us on Vyzulta and the opportunity in front of us.
Louise Chen
Okay. But once you get this Part D coverage and it starts picking up, how much faster do you think the sales will accelerate for Vyzulta?
Joe Papa
Well I think as with any new product, it’s just continuing to have physicians try it. The market right now a large part of the market is a generic latanoprost. So Xalatan, generic Xalatan. We have the same active ingredient of latanoprost or generic Xalatan but we have the nitric oxide component, we think the combination of the nitric oxide plus with latanoprost is dual mechanism of action is the critical components getting the efficacy and having a dual mechanism of action.
We are going to continue to support that with physician. I believe now that we have the Part D coverage or soon to have the Part D coverage, that is going to be one of the big steps that was required to overcome some of the challenges in the marketplace, get trials. Once patients try the product, we are seeing very good results in terms of the efficacy it delivers, as well as what I would say is the repeat usage once when we tries it, you get - we have awareness, we are having trial and getting repeat usage, that's really the key for us.
