8/13/2007- GlaxoSmithKline is considering cutting its pharmaceutical sales force in response to the collapse in sales of its diabetes drug Avandia.
Britain’s largest drugmaker is considering a change in its marketing strategy that could involve letting go or redeploying staff involved in the sale of Avandia, its second top-selling medicine, which generated sales of £1.4 billion last year.
Avandia has suffering a 40 per cent slide in prescriptions in the US since a report in the New England Journal of Medicine linked the medicine to a raised risk of heart attacks.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve soon a recommendation to impose stricter warnings and labeling on the drug, for patients with type 2 diabetes — the kind associated with obesity.
A spokeswoman for GSK said the company was in “wait-and-see mode” ahead of a final decision from the FDA but said that it was normal for the group to appraise regularly its allocation of staff and resources.
Glaxo’s sale force globally comprises 30,000 people, including 9,000 in the US.
However, analysts said that GlaxoSmithKline’s strong pipeline of new drugs meant that the company may prefer to redeploy where possible.
This stands in contrast to the approach adopted by rival pharmaceutical giants such as Pfizer and AstraZeneca, which have radically cut down their global marketing teams in recent months, in part because of a lack of new products to promote.
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