Obesity Investor by Ruthanne Williams Roussel: ARNA Market Research: Docs Excited About Lorcaserin

November 10, 2009

ARNA Market Research: Docs Excited About Lorcaserin

ARNA held its 3Q09 conference call this morning, and there were no shockers.

We’ll return later to the numbers, but for now, I was struck by a market research study ARNA conducted that management says shows docs would be “excited” to prescribe lorcaserin and would prescribe it. Of these prescriptions, 25% would be switching from old weight loss drugs and 75% writing new scripts. This study apparently assumed full reimbursement of all options, but offered as choices only lorcaserin and drugs already approved now (i.e., no Contrave, Empatic or Qnexa options).

ARNA’s study focused on 50 80 of the couple of thousand doctors who now prescribe most of the weight loss meds in the U.S. The Holy Grail though will be to get it out into the general primary care market.

When we multiply the current U.S. market for prescription weight loss drugs, which is some $450 million, by four, we get just under $2 billion. The estimates of a $10 billion or more market that have been tossed around (heck, including by me) assume that the drugs are efficacious and trouble-free enough to expand the market beyond specialized weight-loss clinics and programs and into the primary care, family practice and general practice settings.

Disclosure: Long ARNA, OREX and VVUS

Nov 10, 2009 8:58:28 AM | Arena, Orexigen, Vivus

11 Comments

Lorcaserin is a serotonergic weight-loss drug developed by Arena Pharmaceuticals. As far as I know, it is currently undergoing the final phase of clinical trials in preparation for submission for FDA approval.

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