Bayer Teams up with Schering-plough

PHARMACEUTICALS

Schering-Plough and Bayer have formed an agreement under which the New Jersey-based Schering will attain exclusive U.S. marketing rights to Bayer HealthCare's primary care pharmaceutical products, including the antibiotics Avelox (moxifloxacin) and Cipro (ciprofloxacin). Schering will pay a royalty to Bayer based on net sales of products.

Schering will assist in the U.S. commercialization of Levitra (vardenafil HCl), an erectile dysfunction drug, under Bayer's copromotion agreement with GlaxoSmithKline. Schering and Bayer have also agreed to jointly market Schering's cholesterol-lowering Zetia (ezetimibe) in Japan, where the drug is currently undergoing regulatory review.

Bayer also announced that it plans to create new oncology and specialty pharmaceutical business units in West Haven, Conn.

The oncology unit is poised to commercialize BAY 43-9006, a drug codeveloped by Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals and currently in Phase III clinical trials for advanced renal cell carcinoma. Bayer says the new unit will promote certain Schering-Plough cancer products in the U.S. and Europe. Bayer's Viadur (leuprolide), a treatment for prostate cancer, will also be marketed by the unit.

The specialty pharmaceuticals business will market Bayer's Kogenate FS (recombinant antihemophilic factor), a hemophilia drug, and Trasylol (aprotinin), a drug used in open-heart surgery.

The Schering deal follows Bayer's recent decisions to buy Roche's over-the-counter drug business and spin off its commodity chemicals unit, Lanxess, to shareholders. "We have now reached another strategic milestone for Bayer HealthCare," Bayer Chairman Werner Wenning says.

Bayer says 1,800 U.S.-based employees will be impacted by the deal, "either through transfer to Schering-Plough or through reductions." Bayer's drugs will remain the property and legal responsibility of Bayer and will continue to be sold under the Bayer brand name.