Diet Drug Acomplia Sales Dwarfed by Initial Sales of Diet Pill alli

August 2nd, 2007

Just how badly sales of diet drug Acomplia (rimonabant) have been set back by Sanofi’s inability to bring it to the U.S. market was dramatically illustrated July 25th when GlaxoSmithKline revealed initial launch results for over-the-counter diet pill alli (low-dose Xenical).

Sales of non-prescription alli totaled a surprising $156 million in the weeks after its U.S. launch in mid-June — a sales surge that dwarfs the monthly sales of Acomplia in all the countries where it is on the market in the European Union.

If most of the alli sales were to people initially buying a one-month supply of the over-the-counter diet pill, the sales figure would suggest that more than 1 million Americans decided to try these non-prescription weight-loss product in its first weeks on the market.

By contrast, in the European Union, where Acomplia was approved for sale last summer, somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 are believed to have tried it over the course of a year.

Sanofi had initially hoped that Acomplia — which was to be sold in the United States as Zimulti — would be a blockbuster drug with sales that could even exceed $5 billion worldwide.

But without the U.S. market, it appears that Sanofi will be fortunate if sales in Europe and other countries where it has been approved total one-tenth of that.
Glaxo, in announcing sales results for alli as part of its report on second-quarter earnings, said its big advertising and promotion campaign paid off with more than 2.4 billion.

Glaxo also said that it had recorded more than 4.5 million visits to its website — myalli.com — making it the third-most visited website for any over-the-counter pharmaceutical product.

Acomplia is currently marketed in 13 European Union nations as well as in Argentina, Mexico and a handful of other countries.

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