Merck & Co. hopes cancer vaccine will help offset setbacks

Merck & Co., turning to its public-health roots, plans to introduce the first cancer vaccine in an attempt to revive its sales and reputation.

The third-biggest U.S. drugmaker wants U.S. doctors to inoculate 32 million pre-teens and adolescents against human papillomavirus. The virus is transmitted sexually and causes cervical cancer, diagnosed yearly in more than a half-million women worldwide.

Merck may ask federal officials to urge that the vaccine, known as Gardasil, be used routinely in the same way as the company's measles, mumps and rubella vaccine for infants, created 34 years ago.

Annual sales may reach $3 billion, said Tony Butler, a Lehman Brothers analyst. Merck predicted a $2 billion revenue drop next year after the withdrawal of the Vioxx painkiller and the loss of patent protection for the Zocor cholesterol pill.

"It is the type of vaccine you would expect Merck to develop and can eliminate cervical cancer worldwide," chief executive Richard Clark said in a Nov. 28 telephone interview. "Customers and payers are willing to pay the right price based on the value we bring in eliminating the disease."

The company filed Dec. 5 for an expedited U.S. regulatory review of Gardasil, based on a study that found the vaccine to be 100 percent effective against strains of the virus causing about 70 percent of cervical cancers. An accelerated review would have to be finished in 10 months.

Merck will describe the details of its plans for treatments such as Gardasil at a Dec. 15 meeting with analysts in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, where the company is based.

Vioxx

Merck's stock has lost 10 percent this year after dropping 30 percent in 2004, when Merck withdrew Vioxx because a company study showed it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes in patients taking the drug 18 months or longer.

Shares of Merck declined 55 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $29.13 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The New England Journal of Medicine yesterday said Merck understated the heart disease risks related to Vioxx in a study the journal published in November 2000. In response, Merck said adverse events left out of the published study were disclosed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration