Medicis hopes to gain approval for another pipeline product this year

By Jennifer Lanning Drey

Eugene, Ore., June 19 - Medicis Pharmaceuticals hopes to gain approval this year for another product in its research and development pipeline, according to Mark A. Prygocki, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the company.

However, Medicis has not yet announced whether the product it hopes to advance is from the aesthetic or therapeutic side of the business, Prygocki said Monday at the Wachovia Securities 16th Annual Nantucket Equity Conference.

In addition, the company is looking for more opportunities like the one it found with Reloxin, a botulinum toxin that the company will develop, distribute and commercialize in certain areas of the world under an agreement with European company, Ipsen.

Including an upfront payment of $90 million, Medicis will spend about $193 million for the rights to Reloxin for aesthetic uses in the United States, Canada and Japan.

Internationally, the product is known as Dysport.

Medicis is also further negotiating with Ipsen over the structure of an agreement for Medicis to have aesthetic rights to the drug in other parts of the world. Medicis hopes to have an agreement in place by July 15, Prygocki said.

Dysport is approved in 73 countries for therapeutic use but only 13 countries for aesthetic use, Prygocki said.

Medicis believes the aesthetics market will expand significantly in the United States in the next few years as baby boomers get older, he said.

"We will have broader breadth of high quality aesthetic products than any other company in the aesthetic medicine," Prygocki said.

Medicis also hopes to see men become a more dominant force in the aesthetic market, he said.

"As the dermatologists have gotten into more and more aesthetic medicine, so has our pipeline, and we've evolved with them," Prygocki said.

The company is also preparing to launch its most recent therapeutic product, Solodyn (minocycline HCl, USP), which is approved as extended release tablets for once-daily dosage in the treatment of inflammatory lesions of non-nodular moderate to severe acne vulgaris in patients 12 years and older.

The company expects to launch Solodyn around the third week of July in the United States. Between now and the product's launch, Medicis will train doctors to prescribe Solodyn, he said.

Medicis is a Scottsdale, Ariz., specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of dermatological and podiatric conditions and aesthetics medicine.

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