No­var­tis builds block­buster case for En­tresto, beat­ing out a cheap ACE in­hibitor — or not

No­var­tis ex­ecs got the pos­i­tive da­ta they were look­ing for from their PI­O­NEER-HF study of En­tresto to back ac­cel­er­at­ing sales of the heart med­ica­tion.

Ini­tial­ly a slow mov­ing prod­uct ham­pered by physi­cians re­luc­tant to adopt a new med and pay­ers who were none too hap­py with the price, En­tresto is now com­fort­ably hit­ting its block­buster stride. In the third quar­ter the drug earned $271 mil­lion. And now they’ll be look­ing for con­tin­ued ac­cel­er­a­tion af­ter the drug scored the pri­ma­ry end­point and key sur­vival and re-hos­pi­tal­iza­tion num­bers in a head-to-head study with the cheap ACE in­hibitor enalapril.

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