GlaxoSmithKline’s profits expected to rise

GlaxoSmithKline’s third-quarter profits are expected to rise, according to reports published today.

Increased sales of products for the treatment of asthma, cholesterol and ulcer problems will lead to a five per cent rise in net income to around GBP1.27 billion. The figure is based on a median estimate of 17 analysts from Bloomberg and is the equivalent of a 22 pence per share.

The report further suggests that revenue has been bolstered by sales of Avandia, used for diabetes therapy and Advair, used for the treatment of asthma. It continues that GlaxoSmithKline’s fellow drug company AstraZeneca expects to see profits rise in the next quarter as a result of drug sales.

Andrew Fellows, a drug-company analyst at Helvea, commented:
“Glaxo is the more solid of the companies in terms of having a reasonable pipeline and delivering reasonable top line growth.”

Events in the manufacturer’s pipeline partly depend on sales of Advair and Avandia, with Lamictal, Coreg and vaccines also expected to help sales.

Advair is one of GlaxoSmithKline’s biggest sellers, with sales rising by 12 per cent to GBP816 million this year. Drugs in its pipeline are said to be the strongest in the industry, according to the Guardian and include the cervical cancer treatment Cervarix and Tykerb, used to treat breast cancer.

Schering-Plough in new cancer treatment agreement

Schering-Plough has entered a new non-exclusive agreement with OncoMethylome Sciences for cancer treatments.

Under the agreement, OncoMethylome will receive processing fees for providing Schering-Plough with testing services used for clinical trials. These trials will focus on developing therapies for the treatment of brain and other cancers.

OncoMethylome states that the new agreement allows it to provide further MGMT methylation testing to Schering-Plough. It states: “OncoMethylome currently provides this service for a multi-centre clinical trial that is supported by Schering-Plough. The trial evaluates whether patients with glioblastoma multiforme, a type of brain tumour, can benefit from a more intensive temozolomide drug treatment regimen.”

It adds that the study is testing MGMT methylation for all the patients’ tumours.

The news follows the announcement that OncoMethylome had achieved a “key milestone” in its collaboration with Schering relating to its new clinical trial facility based in the US. The laboratory will evaluate methylation status of the MGMT gene in DNA extracted from brain tumour cells.

Recently, Schering-Plough stated that a net income of GBP152 million is available to common shareholders for its third-quarter results, which equates to around ten pence per share.

European-approval gained for Suboxone sublingual tablets, used for the substitution treatment of opioid dependence was among the recent developments it promoted.