Marketers' Views of Changing Cardiology Practice Patterns

The history of the IIb/IIIa inhibitor Integrilin touches on many of the challenges of cardiology marketing, including how to move a member of a new class of drugs into a complex, rapidly evolving treatment pattern. Having established Integrilin as the most-used drug in its class, its marketer must now deal with the impact on IIb/IIIa use of Angiomax, a potential replacement for heparin. Imagine the scene five years from now: A combination of Angiomax and low-molecular-weight heparin has replaced unfractionated heparin, and the addition of statins and possibly vascular protectants has turned the current triple therapy regimens of anti-coagulants, anti-thrombins, and anti-platelet drugs into a quartet. Physicians attending scientific meetings may well still be puzzling over the proper role of IIb/IIIa inhibitors, and asking themselves the extent to which long-term results from trials initiated early in the 21st century have meaning.