Novartis ties with Vectura on generic asthma drugs

By Ben Hirschler

LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - Novartis (NOVN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research) is working with British inhaled drug specialist Vectura Group (VEC.L: Quote, Profile, Research) on generic versions of today's blockbuster asthma drugs, the head of the Swiss company's generics business has disclosed.

Sandoz CEO Andreas Rummelt told a Deutche Bank conference in New York this week that dry powder combination products -- like GlaxoSmithKline's (GSK.L: Quote, Profile, Research) Advair and AstraZeneca's (AZN.L: Quote, Profile, Research) Symbicort -- represented a major opportunity for generics.

"We are investing significantly as the asthma segment is growing," he said in a webcast.

"We have built a partnership on a dry powder device, which is the GyroHaler from Vectura. This partnership has been established for the U.S. as well as for Europe and we are currently investing more than $50 million in manufacturing, device assembly and device filling lines in eastern Germany."

Vectura announced two years ago that it had signed up an undisclosed partner for GyroHaler and its experimental drug VR315, widely believed by analysts to be generic Advair, but this is the first time that the partner has been revealed.

A second project from Vectura, VR632, is thought to be a generic version of Symbicort.

Copying inhaled drugs is notoriously difficult and delivering them effectively via an inhaler is a key part of the challenge.

But the prize is large. Advair is Glaxo's top-selling medicine, with global sales of 3.5 billion pounds ($6.84 billion) last year, while Symbicort revenues totalled $1.6 billion.