The EMS year-end challenge
O Estado de S. Paulo
Every Monday, the executives of the pharmaceutical company EMS get to the office in Hortolândia, 115 km from São Paulo, in a specially anxiety mood. It is in that day the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) normally announces the list of generic drugs whose registration has been approved - and thus can be sold. The company currently has five drugs awaiting approval and it expects at least two to be approved by the end of the year.
Those launchings are important to help the laboratory achieve an ambitious goal: ending the last month of 2010 as the leader in generics in the Country, a position today occupied by Medley (in the general ranking, including branded medicines, EMS is already the first). "We expect a leap in the coming weeks," says Waldir Eschberger, Market Vice President of EMS. "When we make it, we won't leave the first place anymore. We want 2011 to be our first year in the leadership of generics".
In 2010, EMS has proven to be the most active company among the manufacturers of generics. Since January, the company grew 37% - more than the 30% it foresaw. The plant, as well as its body of scientists, worked 24 hours a day divided into three shifts. And, in the maximum expression of its aggressiveness, the company was the first to put into the market the copies of the two main drugs whose patents expired in 2010: Viagra, for erectile dysfunction, and Lipitor, for cholesterol control. Together, those generic drugs should generate nearly US$ 300 million in a year from now, according to the Pró Genéricos (Brazilian Association of Generic Drugs Industries). And, in the logics of such market, arriving first inevitably means becoming the leader.
Behind the results, there is a sophisticated generic launching machine. With 200 specialists, EMS has the largest drug development center of the country, which begins outlining the copy of a drug four years before the expiration of its patent. The area of trademarks and patents works with similar lead time. The executives of EMS currently follow up nearly 200 lawsuits that discuss the period of validity of patents.