Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Wednesday November 7, 2001
Ransdell Pierson and Jed Seltzer

Speaking to analysts and investors at a conference in New York, Bristol-Myers' Chief Scientific Officer Peter Ringrose said the firm aims to have another nine experimental medicines begin full development by 2002.

Among products for which it will seek U.S. approval by next year are its Des-Quinolone antibiotic to treat respiratory infection and Atazanavir, which would be the first once-daily protease inhibitor to treat the HIV virus. The company has already said it will seek approval by year's end for hypertension drug Vanlev and has filed for approval of cancer drug Erbitux, which was developed by the drug giant's partner ImClone Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:IMCL - news).

The world's No. 5 drugmaker earlier on Wednesday said it had sought approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market aripiprazole, a schizophrenia drug that has a different mechanism of action than existing treatments.

The New York-based company held the meeting to drum up enthusiasm for its pipeline of future drugs, at a time when recent patent expirations have ushered in brutal competition from cheap copycat versions of its cancer treatment Taxol and anxiety medicine BuSpar.

Analyst Sam Isaly of New York research firm OrbiMed Advisors said there were few surprises in the lineup of new drugs described in the four-hour presentation, the firm's first R&D meeting since 1997.

But Isaly called the pipeline an improvement from Bristol's sluggish internal drug development before Ringrose took over as research chief over four years ago.

"Peter Ringrose has turned things around, and Bristol-Myers is becoming competitive with its peers, but a turnaround is not going to happen overnight," Isaly said of the firm, which in past years has licensed many of its top-selling drugs from other companies rather than discovering them on its own. "Ringrose is asking us to wait a year to see an impact. In the short term, there is a big hole in revenue growth and this is not enough to overcome 2002, which is likely to be a tough year," Isaly said.

Bristol-Myers chief executive Peter Dolan said in an interview that his company aims to depend more and more on its own in-house research to come up with new medicines.

"What I envision in the future is a split of about two thirds of our revenue growth coming from products that we develop internally like those products we talked about today, and one third coming from what we are able to bring in from the outside."

Shares of Bristol-Myers closed down $1.50, or about 2.7 percent, to $54.26 on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday.

The company's stock is off over 26 percent since the start of the year, significantly underperforming its peers on the American Stock Exchange Pharmaceuticals index, which is off 11 percent over the same period.

DRUGS ON DECK

The drugmaker aims to seek U.S. approval in 2003 for rheumatoid arthritis treatment CTLA4Ig and seek marketing approval in 2004 for two other key experimental drugs, Entecavir for treating people infected with the hepatitis B virus and LEA 29Y to prevent rejection of transplanted organs.

The firm touted Superstatin, its experimental treatment for high cholesterol, as potentially far more potent than Pfizer Inc's (NYSE:PFE - news) Lipitor, the leading cholesterol fighter on the market.

Bristol-Myers officials said Superstatin lowered levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol by more than 60 percent when given to patients in early trials. It is a member of the "statin" class of cholesterol fighters that includes Lipitor.

To boost its core drugs business, Bristol-Myers last month paid $7.8 billion for the pharmaceuticals division of DuPont Co. (NYSE:DD - news). In September, it agreed to take a 20 percent stake in New York biotech ImClone in a deal to co-develop the tiny firm's Erbitux for treatment of colorectal and other cancers.

In an effort to focus more on prescription drugs, Bristol-Myers is selling its Clairol beauty products unit and recently spun off its Zimmer orthopedic devices division.
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