Son of Neurontin Meets the Fibromyalgia Epidemic

Evanston, IL

Who says technology transfer doesn't pay?

Pregablin, discovered by Northwestern University chemist Richard Silverman in 1989 to become Pfizer's Lyrica, earned the university a cool $700 million when it sold royalties in Dec. 2007.

The nerve pain-cum-seizure pill is funding the $100 million Richard and Barbara Silverman Hall for Molecular Therapeutics & Diagnostics--currently a hole in the ground on the way to the student union--which will employ 245 this fall. Views of Lake Michigan and the duck pond included.

And, thanks to FDA approval in 2007 of Lyrica as the first US drug for the pain condition fibromyalgia, it may earn as much as its molecular relative--Pfizer's Neurontin (gabapentin)--which made $3 billion a year before its patent ran out in 2004.

No wonder they call Lyrica son of Neurontin.

Of course there have  been setbacks on the road to marketing Lyrica.

In 2001, Pfizer had to freeze pain trials and restrict pregablin in patients when test mice developed cancerous tumors. Profit warning! But when rats tests were okay, Toni Hoover, a vice president with Pfizer's now defunct Ann Arbor, MI labs sounded the all clear. "The FDA has found that the benefit of taking the drug outweighs any risk," she told the Detroit News.

Pfizer brass failed to embrace Silverman the way it embraced the $564 million he made for them in Lyrica's first three months. ("They had a launch party for the drug, and I asked to come. Nope. No party for me. They take your stuff and tell you to go away," he told the Chicago Tribune.)

And Lyrica's not approved for the "social phobia" detailed in Pfizer original marketing plans. Yet.

But as long as pharma can get a drug approved in advance of its uses and people will take an antipsychotic for the blues or a seizure med for migraines, Lyrica has a future.

Initial articles about Lyrica which, like Neurontin, is an anti-seizure drug that modulates calcium channels to dampen the excitability of nerve endings, were positive.

"Well tolerated," said Arthritis and Rheumatism in 2005.

"Proven efficacy" and "No new adverse events," said Drugs of Today in 2005 and 2007.

"Durability of effect for relieving FM pain," said the journal Pain in 2008.

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